1)  

     I said goodbye to my Dad at the greyhound station in Omaha Nebraska armed with a military surplus seabag, a long novel, and many worries and expectations.  I found the bus seats very hard to get comfortable upon and when I changed buses in Sioux City, the carpeted boxes in the rear were even harder.  This was little to complain about though as almost anything would have been better than another monday morning at the moving company.  Even the office and warehouse with their pole-shed, one-story industrial design and landscaped trees was depressing.  The bus trip was something of an experience in itself, starring characters like the no-legged man, an Amish family, the man with the bottle of Vodka, and the delinquent kid.  Twelve hours later (its only nine by car), I found myself in Valley City North Dakota where Mike was asleep in his car waiting for me. 

     There we spent the better part of the week doing last minute car maintenance.  This was something of an annoyance as I was under the impression we would be leaving a day or two after my arrival.  Each morning brought new tasks and each evening brought another delay of our departure.  Meanwhile, Mike kept on at his day job figuring, properly, that the extra cash would do us good.  Mike's Dad, Big Jim, was also home from his trucking job for the week.  While Mike's family went off to work every day Big Jim and I did a weird sort of father-son bonding.  The only problem being that he was someone else's dad and I was someone else's son.  No matter though, with eight or ten hours to kill each day while everyone else was busy being their own little piece of the economic system.

     I was beginning to feel like I had worn out my welcome as Betty Babe, Mike's mom, seemed to be getting a little grumpy.  I was also starting to get frustrated because in leaving Omaha as early as I did, I was skipping an old friend's wedding and felt a little guilty about it.  As day after day slid by at the Murphy ranch, so did my friends' wedding day and I realized that if I had known ahead of time this stall of events, I could have gone.  Oh well.

     Each day brought new chores for the old beast as Mike dreamed up preventative maintenance daily.  In the meanwhile, I drove a golf cart around as Big Jim and some of Mike's other relatives went golfing.  We went shopping downtown at crazy days where the streets were blocked off for the local merchants to take over temporarily.  I went driving to Lake Ashtabula with on of the local lovelies in her MG convertible and looked at the stars while the walls of the valley for which the town is named passed by.  This particular foray I treated as training, and when we returned Mike was already in bed.  The northern lights had become quite active that night and I stood in the middle of the street getting a crook in my neck as I watched the brilliance and color of the Aurora Borealis dance about the entire sky.

     Finally, when I had done all the father-son bonding I could with the relative stranger, Mike's dad, and when I was sure Mike's mom was getting sick of me hanging around and eating their food, and when we did all the extra little things to the car, and when we had made our venison jerky and homemade granola, and missed our travel date by four evenings, and when the rest of Mike's family was sure we were never leaving, we packed up the red bitch and stood in the alley behind the house where the garage was.  Mike's parents had gone out in the evening and were reluctant to say goodbye and didn't figure we would leave by the time they returned.  Mike's sister and her friend had given us the obligatory hugs and farewell wishes and then bet us we wouldn't be gone by the time their movie was over.

     With ass-end slung low, the top down in the starry evening, and one tarzan holler each, we bounced down the alley to begin our adventure.  The car was a 1963 Ford Falcon, three years from being an official antique that Mike hawked his surfboard for out in San Diego, our aimed for turn-around point.  I was twenty years old and had lost a lot of weight that summer working for a moving company.  Mike was twenty three and had spent his summer building houses by day and working on the Ford by night.  Legend has it that there were more than a few evenings Mike's exasperated mother woke him up from underneath the red chariot and chased him to bed claiming the whole trip to be a stupid idea.  While I never fell asleep under the car, my mother felt virtually the same way.  Our mothers were probably right, but who cared? Each of us had about four hundred dollars and only about half our allotment of common sense.  Happily, we threw our fates to the breeze and headed west on I-94.  Speeding tickets weren't a problem as the old bird could only do about fifty without heating up too much.

     We made it about an hour west that night before we started to feel the pangs of sleepiness overtake us.  Responding to the swervy nature of that state of awareness we found a rest area and slept for the evening.  Despite my tiredness, sleep was hard to come by.  I knew before the trip that we would be sleeping in the car but I figured that meant one of us in back and one in the front.  It did not occur to me that the back seat would be full of shit and the front seats didn't recline.  Sleeping on this trip usually meant propping yourself up against the door and the seat with a blanket over your head to keep you warm and oblivious to headlights and people.  Consequently, the first night I don't think I slept much.  I was grateful when dawn finally brightened the horizon and the sun began warming the earth.  When she finally made her appearance, we already were nosed west and the sunrise happened in our rear view mirrors.

2)

     Not really having felt very asleep at all that night, it was a relief as well as exciting to see the new day dawn over the plains of North Dakota.  After brushing our teeth and spitting the suds on the rest area's grass, we got the car's freight in order and set off.  I hadn't realized until the first morning just what a chore getting things together before we set off was going to be.  This was more an idiosyncracy of personality than of road trips in general, and my fellow traveler was most often quite meticulous about our luggage and the general maintenance and appearance of the old buggy.

     Starting out that morning I was excited that we were finally getting somewhere.  The bus trip had taken a whole day just to get to Mike's house, our starting line.  Almost a week had passed while I hung out at the Casa del Murph, and finally we saw open road ahead of us.  Not realizing that the majority of our trip would be spent sitting at the wheel watching the West unfold around us, I sat in anticipation.  Like a little kid having to pee on the trip to grandma's house, I felt a lot like "are we there yet?" 

     Looking forward on the map, we busily made calculations regarding our estimated time of arrival in Montana.  North Dakota is a beautiful state, but it was our port state and we felt that Montana would surely be an indicator that we were moving along finally.

     This trip had been the subject of many dreams and plans since about January that year.  The idea was hatched over countless afternoons of coffee in our dorm rooms in college that year.  As the Minnesota January unfolded its harsh beauty outside our window, we retreated to a netherworld of Atlases, warm summer highways, convertible breezes, and innumerable late afternoons.  Having been to California only once before, I was quite interested in seeing it again, and more of it this time. 

     Headed west across the Great Plains we watched the endless grasslands pass slowly by, while other motorists passed us quickly by.  Most of them had a smile and a wave for the two young men acting out the quintessential American cliche.  Our antique Ford purred along happily and we began to discuss philosophy and life.  We passed the biggest buffalo and the biggest dairy cow sculptures.  We pulled over to investigate the dairy cow partly out of interest and partly out of a high temperature needle.  With the nose parked into the breeze we climbed atop the pile of rocks at the top of the hill and tried to reach the cow's teats for some nourishment. 

     While I was on top of the rocks excitedly getting dusty Mike laughed at me and said I should wait for the mountains, for indeed we were not even out of North Dakota yet.  This was true and we hopped back in the Old Red Bitch and continued our sojourn.  We chomped on our first batch of jerky and tried to break off pieces of our granola, which had solidified into one giant chunk.  Maybe we packed it in the garbage bag too early after it came out of the oven.  This stash of these two unspoilable foods was to be the bulk of our food for the first half of our trip.

     Mike was complaining that the car wanted to veer leftward, and so when we got to Bismarck, ND, we took the car to an allignment shop to make it go straight.  After fifty very precious dollars and an hour, we wer back on the road.  On the way out of town, we realized that the car didn't go anymore straight than it ever had.  Frustratedly, we returned to the repair shop to have them try again; fifty dollars was after all a chunk of our budget. 

     I stood around the shop on that drizzly day while Mike argued with the allignment guy and the other shop workers regarded me with an air of both humor and accusation.  We left and came back on more time, and we weren't greeted with much happiness at all the third time.  The fellow grumpily put the car on the rack a third time and showed how the lasers all matched up.  He then told Mike it was the car and not the allignment.  Mike of course thought the guy was full of shit, because the car had gone straight in the past.

     Trying his best to get rid of us, they gave us our money back and told us maybe we had it loaded too heavily to one side.  Pointing out that we took care making sure the load was balanced, we took our money and left, vowing never to return to Bismarck again.  I have since passed through of course.

     We had wasted eight hours with those yahoos at the allignment shop and I am sure they loved us for it.  A little out of site, we rearranged the goods in the trunk and solved our problem.  Another day had begun to close and we were still not out of North Dakota.  In order to remedy this slow state of affairs, we drove late into the night.  We also figured the cold night air would be easier on the easily overheated engine.  We were both almost asleep and just about ready to go exploring the ditches when we came upon Beach, North Dakota.  This was the last town before Montana, but we knew we had to pull over.  There aren't a lot of people or places to pull over to sleep up in that corner of the world and so we pulled into the truck stop and slept. 

     We tucked the car next to a tractor-trailer where we would be hard to find and opted for the horizontal luxury of sleeping on the ground.  After peeing on the bush at the top of the nearby hill, I rolled my bag out on the gravelled parking lot and cuddled as close to the car as I could for safety.  Mike slept in his odd configuration of blankets he stole from his mom and we slept hard. 

3)

     Waking up in Beach, North Dakota was beautiful.  Most of the trucks of the night before were already on the road and the parking lot was mostly empty, leaving us quite exposed.  We both had slept so soundly that neither of us had heard the truck traffic that morning.

     Everything was coated with a heavy dew, and the sun was creeping up over the hills.  This morning, at Mike's suggestion, we utilized the dewfall and washed and waxed the car.  I thought this a bit frivolous because I would've rather been rolling and the car already looked good enough.  nevertheless, it was Mike's car and we were on vacation, so I humored him and soon enough the car was sparkly brightly enough to hurt our eyes. 

     After this we started the morning water ritual and washed our hair, our faces, and brushed our teeth.  The trucker next to us regarded us with a little wonder but smiled and waved all the same.  I am sure we made quite the sight at times.  I, with my wet tangly hair encircling my head and field of vision, and Mike with his scary morning eyes, both standing in a puddle of soap suds in varying degrees of nudity and dress, depending on the extent of the wash that morning.  To top it off this particular morning we were waxing the car in a giant gravel parking lot.

     We decided to spend a little money and had some breakfast at the truck stop as well.  We flirted a little with the waitress who was about our age and asked her some about life in Beach.  Apparently she was from somewhere else and commuted a small distance for this truck stop job.  The economy didn't look like it was thriving in most of the northern plains we traveled through.  She also told us that in fact there was no water, and never had been near Beach and had no better idea why it was called so than either Mike or I.

     Refreshed and happy on this beautiful sunny morning, we once again pointed the now shiny red bitch to the west and finally bade farewell for three weeks to North Dakota.  This was it.  We had finally made it out of the home state and our trip had begun.  The only disappointment with finally making it to Montana was that it still looked like North Dakota.  We climbed and surpassed the happy hills that sunny morning at a steady fifty miles an hour and watched the world revolve around the heavens unimpeded by the automatic ragtop which we had manually stowed away before pushing forth.    

4)

     As the road slowly passed us by, Montana started to look a little less like North Dakota and began to take on a life of its own.  Regarding the size of the state and the capable speed of our ride, we knew it would take a couple of days to get through Montana.

     The car had been making a certain funny noise most of the way, and we debated about whether or not the noise was getting better or worse.  It was akin to a clatter and arose when applying gas at slow speeds.  We could never tell if it was worsening or going away, and in retrospect it probably didn't change much at all.  But, as we didn't have a lot of money and couldn't afford a big breakdown down the road, we worried about it anyway.

     Mike had taken apart and put together much of the car before the trip but he hadn't delved into the heart of the engine much except to try and fix an oil leak around the valve cover with orange liquid gasket goo.  Cars and I don't do well.  Not knowing much about how they work beyond the basics, I have always been somewhat shy about tearing them apart and fixing them.  I fear what I do not understand.  This is what I thought Mike was like.  While he had taken most of the car apart and put it back together, he had not yet tackled the valves.  Consequently, when we heard an unidentifiable noise, which was quite often, he claimed it was the valves.  While he may have been right some of the time, I didn't figure that was our trouble every time.  So I teased him about it.

     As we came into Miles City, Montana, we wondered about the origination of the strange noise, Mike got flustered at his old car and wanted to play with the valves a bit.  We looked around Miles City for a place to park for a while to think about it.  We had been driving for some time that day and were ready to rest some regardless of the valves. 

     Miles City was about as old west-looking as anything I'd seen on TV.  It was very hot, very dry, and the part of town we came in through had old split-rail fences around the ranches.  The trees were scarce and the dominant vegetation was scrub.  We pulled into a city park amid the clatter of our vehicle and sat a bit under some of the few big shade trees.  I think they were cottonwoods, my favorites and Mike's most hated. 

     Mike got out his shop manual and started looking at the fix-it diagrams of the head and the valves.  I teased him about the forever worrisome valves and I think I hurt his feelings.  I should've realized then that the car gods would haunt us with those valves before the trip was over.    

          After discerning that we needed some advice about the noisy situation, we asked about and aimed the Falcon toward a repair shop a local had described to us.  We found a guy who worked on old Fords in a Marine-looking tin shed that resembled a barrel half underground sideways.  There's an official name for those buildings, but my lack of military service leaves me without the term.  Standing in the glaring afternoon sun, the mechanic says that he can't spare time for us but gives the car an ear and informs us that the clatter is not the valves but something to do with the starter plate on the Fordomatic transmission.

     This car had one of the first automatic transmissions that Ford mass-produced and it sure acted like a first try.  If you stepped on the gas too much going up hill, it would slam into its lower gear (there were only two gears) despite the fact that the car was already going too fast for low gear.  The engine would whine away in first gear and you would counter this by letting up off the accelerator just enough to convince it to shift back to second.  Then you had to try and maintain that speed and pressure because if you slowed up the car would shift back to first, as it properly should.  But our particular car ran so hot that if you just churned up the hill slowly in first, there was not enough breeze across the radiator to keep the engine from overheating.  This got to be quite a balancing act when we hit the mountains.  Oftentimes, we had to pull over halfway up a mountain to let the engine cool down before proceeding.

     On the way to the junkyard that assumedly posessed the recommended pieces for fixing the clatter in the tranny, we ran into someone Mike knew at a gas station.  This was rather wierd because we were in Montana, but I suppose we weren't that far from North Dakota after all.  I think it was someone who dated his sister or something.  Anyway, I don't know if Mike liked the guy much, but we pretended he did, and I was introduced and promptly forgotten.  We continued following directions until we found a junkyard on a dusty dirt road on the outskirts of town.  The road to the yard was somewhat jouncy, which was tricky as the old Ford's suspension had all it could take supporting our baggage and spare parts. 

     We motored on into the yard and asked the yard guys for some diagnostic help.  Looking and listening from beneath after we had driven the car up on some logs we found the gear we suspected of making the noise.  The logs and boards that suspended the car above us were enough to make me nervous for they were little more than a jury-rigged pile of lumber.  We tried to bend the dust plate away from the starter gear, but that only helped a little.  Frustrated with that effort, we tried a different starter from one of the junkyard's rotting hulks.  The starter not only didn't help but it didn't start either.  We then began a musical chairs succession of replacing the original and the junkyard starters in combination with our own and one of the junkyard's batteries.  I'm not sure just which starter we left with, but I do know that the battery we finished with was an Audi battery. 

     We had pulled and replaced the starter about three times and both were tired of getting burned by the exhaust manifold trying to tighten and loosen the appropriate nuts.  As we fought and wrestled with the various parts, the sun traveled across the bright blue sky and we nakedly baked underneath.  Sometime during that long dry afternoon, Mike turned to me and suggested I look out from beneath the car.

     Asking me what the view reminded me of, I peered out at the slit of the world we were priveledged with from beneath the car and purveyed the dry fields, the dirt parking lot, the sparse trees and the brutal sun cooking it all into a very burnt stew.  I couldn't think of anything I was reminded of at that moment lying in the fine gravel and was a little dumbfounded by Mike's request. 

     "Luke Skywalker's home planet from Star Wars" he told me.  Looking once again at the almost desert-like appearance, the ubiquity of the dust, and the omnipresence of the all-powerful sun, I had to concede that Mile's City Montana from beneath a Ford Falcon in a junkyard's dirt parking lot on a very hot August afternoon bore a frightening resemblance to the early scenes from the first of the Star Wars trilogy.  Thinking of Luke servicing the atmospheric water collecters and tasting the salt dripping from my upper lip, I could think of almost nothing so nice as such a moisture device.

     Wiping the stinging sweat and the dust from my eyes and face, we watched the employees at the junkyard go home for the evening.  We crawled out from underneath the hulk and had a confab sitting on a log that seemed to imitate a parking block.  Looking at the last four or five days and recalling the number of times we had already had problems, we audited our accounts, mine tucked away in an envelope in a pocket of a travel bag deep in the trunk.  We talked about our options at that point considering the fact that we had already spent a good deal of time and money working on the red bitch, and considering that we had not yet come too terribly far. 

     With my greasy hair blowing into my eyes, I have to admit that I was ready to turn around and go home.  Just what I would do the rest of the summer wasn't that big a problem compared to the relative luxury of sleeping in my own bed and not worrying about and eternally working on this car.  Mike loved the car, and we had planned this trip since February, but nevertheless, inertia and anxiety had turned my eyes temporarily eastward.  Mike though, was not ready to give up the ghost.  Mike's desire to continue westward was enough to sway the scales and we decided that our original goal of San Diego was still our turnaround goal.

     One last person was still at the junkyard by this time as evening was drawing nigh.  One of my favorite times of day, especially in late summer, is late afternoon.  As the sun gets closer to the westward horizon and the temperature starts approaching something more reasonable, I love to watch the shadows grow longer.  It is a wonderfully mellow, easy time of day, and there is hardly a better way to spend it than sitting on a parking log somewhere in the great plains watching it all happen.  On a day like this one which had been tough, there is the added enjoyment of simple well-earned relaxation.  The car may have run very little better, but we had done a lot of work.  As the evening fell, how could we not go on?

     We befriended the lone junkyard guy, Joe, and found out that he was only seventeen.  In order to thank him for helping us out all day with the Falcon, we went and got a twelve pack of beer at a convenience store that had a fine looking teller earlier that day.  We went back to the shop and he told us about being seventeen in Miles City, Montana. 

     As it turns out, Miles City is not a very big town and the noteworthy young woman at the convenience store was his old girlfriend and he was still sore about her.  We assured him he was much better off without her.  He showed us his "Montana Hot Rod," a lime green late 'sixties pickup with a modified Mustang engine and a pair of slicks tucked under the bed.  I don't remember the details, but the engine was pretty nice and made a hell of a good noise.  A pair of junkyard labs lounged around his scuffed cowboy boots (what else would you expect to find on a teenager in Montana?) near the oil stains on the concrete floor of the shop.  The one-speaker radio on the counter tinnily belted out a mixture of country and rock and roll while we drank our beers and talked about life as young adults.  Too young to care about what the rest of life will bring, but ready to get out of high school and start trying.  Life in Miles City seemed a lot like life everywhere; never anything to do, not enough girls in town, the boredom of youth.  We learned about "goat-ropers," freshly pressed dudes in cowboy duds who had never ridden horses or chased cows.  Apparently, in Miles City this is the kind of insult that will get your butt kicked pretty bad if whispered in one of the bars

     As the night waxed, Mike and I decided to hit the road.  We had spent enough time in Miles City and needed to get going before we had too many more beers.  Leaving the remainder of the twelve with Joe, we walked out into one of the darkest nights I have ever seen.  With no moon out yet, and being outside of town there was little light drifting our way.  The shop's yard light was either burnt out or not on and the finality of the blackness was somewhat unnerving to a city kid who grew up where daytime never really ends.  There was only the light of the stars pincushioning the blackness of the infinite emptiness above and the light issuing from the doorway onto a neat yellow rectangle on the ground just outside the shop. 

     We walked into the darkness and crossed our fingers.  The engine came to life as if nothing had happened that day and through a fresh chew, Joe waved goodbye.  Our spotlights aimed us dimly away from the shop and the clattering of the transmission was a little quieter as we bounced down the road towards town in search of I-94 West.  Joe's friends probably still don't believe him as he sits in one of the local bars, legally this time, telling this same story from his end.

5.1)

     Leaving Miles City in its blackness, we continued westward in the Montana night.  We drove and drove until we got sleepy and we drove some more.  The cool night air was a lot easier on the antique engine and we hoped we were making up for lost time.  We had many colorful conversations those late evenings designed to be stimulating enough for both of us to stay awake, Mike so we wouldn't crash, and me, so Mike wouldn't fall asleep. 

     We pulled into a small town and started looking for an inconspicuous place to sleep.  Part of the trick to car camping is not sticking out.  If you lie low, problematic people might not find you and they will not bother you.  Cops are no different.  If the cops can't find you, they cannot wake you up and chase you out of town.

     This night then we slept in the parking lot of an empty supermarket.  It looked like it would've been a big Safeway in its day, and now the lot's lights were turned off and there were weeds sprouting throughout the cracks in the lot.  Tucked next to the building we slept nicely.  When we woke up the next morning we could see just how desolate this old grocery had come to look.  It's few neighbors were in similar disrepair, and it was sad to see what a downturn in the economy was capable of.  Many of the northern plains states had had economies that have been typically boom-bust economies where good periods saw huge growth and bad periods saw withering and death.  Thus, here in Nowhere-In-Particular, Montana there was a giant empty shell of a supermarket that looked to date from the 'sixties or 'seventies sitting empty like a vacant toroise shell. 

     Mike says: "The economy doesn't look too good here in Montana." 

     No more or fewer words could say it more succinctly.  It is especially sad to look at what contemporary poverty does to people and to communities, and these were good examples of just what problematic economic processes could do to a beautiful place.  These sad facts are all the more poignant when considering the fact that generations of more indiginous people lived on these same plains with the same rootedness to Terra Mom in great dignity with far fewer resources than are presently available to our society.  We have made societal moves forward (we assume), but for many individuals in our society, we have moved backwards.  Take into account the dignity, lifestyles, and worth of the lives of the Indians who fought Custer to save their homeland and compare that to the overworked dad living in the trailer with a family wearing goodwill rags.  The working poor man whose wages can't afford a safe or desireable place for his family.

     Some nights we took to leaving the roof down in the cold night air under the assumption that if we were uncomfortably cold (ie. numb and shivering), we would be too uncomfortable to sleep.  As the nights wore on though, we knew we would need a place to sleep.  Another night when we saw the turnoff with the cross lighted up on the hill, we thought this might be an ok place to sleep.

     We pulled into the town from the freeway and in a haze of sleepiness put into a closed gas station up in the side lot and slept.  Before we fell asleep, we saw a local cop regarding us quizically, but apparently unconcernadly as he left us to sleep.  Interestingly, if we weren't being hassled by the cops for sleeping in the wrong place or looking wierd, they were looking out for our safety.  We were well aware there are some bad people out there, and we didn't want to mess with them.  It was nice to know that the local sheriff knew where we were sleeping so that he could keep an eye on us throughout the night.

     Some nights we would just pull off the freeway on an off-ramp and drive a mile up the county road where we'ld settle into an approach for the night.  Considering the size of some of the ranches in Montana, these were fairly out of the way places to spend the night.  With a wool blanket over my head to keep me warm and to keep me invisible to passerby, these were pretty good ways to make camp. 

     In the morning we would inevitably wake up greasy, and we would start our mornings by washing up a bit and brush our teeth as we were cruising down the interstate.  It's not until one makes a trip like this where washing up is a chore instead of just a part of the daily routine where you realize how much time and effort we spend trying to keep ourselves sanitized.  After we cleaned up, we always felt better, but the day would end and the next day would come and I would feel bitter that it was already time to wash up again.  It's kind of like painting the house.  Worth it when you're finished, but all too soon before you're back up on the ladder again.

5.2)

     Somewhere, anywhere in the middle of Montana, we were driving with the top down in the old convertible wearing equally old beatup hats to keep from getting too burnt.  As the northern plains scrolled by, I would find myself immersed in the beauty of the moment and the land.  Life and all about it just felt as if it were all in place as we reclined in our sofa chairs in the living room of Montana watching the television of the road ahead of us through the windshield.  The whole ecosystem seemed to putz along happily doing the jobs it has been doing for millions of years and the locals putzed along happily doing the jobs they had been doing for thirty years.  It is hard to put down on paper how those afternoons felt, for they were almost spiritual.  When your soul is happy and free and your mind is clear, when the land about you speaks back the same contendedness as you pass through it, when your company is your best friends; this is the closest to religion I have ever come and moments of such groundedness are possibly the whole reason to live.  When you can look up at a sky so blue against the yellow branches of trees and horizons of grass and know that this is the voucher for life, you know that it is all worth it; you know why we are here.

     As we progressed west through Montana, the land grew from that typical of the northern plains to the hills and buttes that mark the west.  We climbed into foothills and went ecstatic with more tarzan yells as the mountains came into view in the distance.  Not having been through the mountains since I was a child, I was looking very forward to seeing them again as an adult.  My anticipation waned though as the time between the high excitement of seeing them in the distance stretched lengthily into driving into them.  Nevertheless, by afternoon we were driving amongst the mountains doing our best to keep the engine from overheating on the upsides. 

     The downsides were easier on the engine as the lingering afternoons cought us in neutral pushing eighty with no feet on the brakes.  Giant grins and sunburns indicated we were doing okay.  Wheels screeching around the turns, I thought about calling my folks as it had been almost a week since I had called them last at Mike's parents' house.  Wouldn't it be ironic if the American cliche, two young men in t-shirts traveling west in a red convertible ended up in a ball of flames and twisted metal at the bottom of mountain ravine?  No matter, wheels screeching and temp needle almost to the bottom of the guage we careened around another corner.  It was a good thing for most average folks that they had to work and therefore wern't on the roads with us those weekdays.  Having lost all track of time (even though we both promised our mothers we would go to church on sundays) most of our trip and its adventures fell on workdays when the great majority of the world was busy being productive on the construction sites or in the offices of adulthood.  Good for them because the roads weren't safe while we were out having fun.  Two states, almost a week, and who knows how many miles from home, we slowed, coming to the bottom of the hill as another afternoon inevitable travelled to a close.

6)

     Another Montana afternoon finds us travelling through the mountains looking for Missoula.  We knew there was a rest area on the eastern side of Missoula and we were eyeing the stream on the side of the road as having poachable, tasty fish in it.  When the rest area came up and we could tell that the stream went through it, we decided to turn in early that evening and see if we couldn't catch some fish and work on the carbeurator a little (it had been smelling a little gassy).

     We drove happily into the lightly wooded rest area and found a suitable parking spot.  Popping the hood, Mike quickly reached in and dismantled the carbeurator.  Holding the tiny piece of equipment in our hands we looked at it trying to figure out if it leaked or what we needed to do to get it to run better.  The old Falcon was an interesting car; we changed the gas mixture from leaner to richer from time to time as driving needs demanded, and we adjusted the timing several times according to the relative humidity and the terrain we were crossing.  Adjusting the timing was simply a matter of twisting the distributor cap a little one way or the other on the distributor.  This was a trick, everyone we ran into who ever owned a Falcon knew and tried to tell us.  So to previous owners of Falcons I am sure it would not be a surprise that were holding the carbeurator in our hands trying to find the gassy smell. 

     About that time, Mike decided he needed to go to the bathroom, and I was supposed to find the leak (ha ha ha).  While he was walking away from me toward the restroom, I saw some of our other rest area compatriots.  About a hundred feet from our car there sat an early 'seventies four door rumbling away loudly.  It was as beat up looking as any of the sedans from that era any of my friends ever had.  With various dents and scrapes and the suspension obviously shot as it hung quite lopsidedly low, it made for an ugly road beast.  From the openly gaping doors climbed four of the scraggliest looking people I could imagine.     Two big hairy guys with unwashed long hair and shabby clothes started heading my way.  Great time for Mike to go to the bathroom, huh?  I eyed their travelling companions and saw two of the skinniest, most malnourished examples of woman-flesh I have been priveledged to.  They sat in the car, not bothering to see what their brutes were up to. 

     I once went to an Ozzy concert and it was pretty good, save for Ozzy's short show as a result of his bronchitis.  The people at that concert were a good example of what type these two guys walking toward me were before they ever set out on a road trip.  Now they had evolved (devolved?) into gypsie-metalheads who had done too many drugs, or eaten way too little.  Or both, because a car like that had to leave very little cash for food after it lunched greedily on its gas ration.

     Mike saw how alone and little I looked as he left to go pee and peed quickly, hoping not to leave me stranded too long.  When he returned, we had struck up something of a conversation.  The guys seemed nice enough although Mike was elusive with answers about what we were up to.  They certainly looked scarier than they acted.  One had a teardrop tattooed on his eye, and I've heard that means something, but I don't know what.  Neither had showered any more recently than Mike or I.  Mike was busily reattaching the carbeurator so we would be unhandicapped in case of trouble. 

     While Mike fixed the carbeurator, they told us that they had heard there was good "cid" in Washington and thus were headed that way.  Not being big into drugs myself it took a little while to realize that "cid" would be a-cid.  Well, I don't really care what people do in their spare time, and I don't much care what they do to their bodies and minds, and so their going to Washington to get a good buzz bothered me none at all.  What did bother me was that they still didn't look too trustworthy, and who knows if they needed money or something?

     When we all finished talking, they rejoined their emaciated females and Mike and I discussed what we should do.  Recognizing that we could easily come off as well-off college kids in Dad's old car, Mike pointed out that there was potential motivation to rob us.  True, but they wouldn't realize how little they would end up with.  Nevertheless, we decided it would be better not to tempt anybody with that potential.  We also knew that if they were going to Washington they would be on the same road as us and wondered how we could ensure that they would leave us alone in the future.

     This is when I was introduced to Mike's wierdness theory.  Basically, the wierder we looked, the more people would leave us alone.  This turned out to be true, and the goal is to be so wierd that not only normal people wouldn'e bother us, but even the wierdoes would let us be.  It is something of a challange to be wierder than the wierdoes, but if we could accomplish that, we would be even safer on the trip.  Sizing up these wierdoes, we wondered what we could do that would wierd them out too much to deal with us.

     Mike and I were sitting on the ground facing each other contemplating this problem when I got and went over to a nearby birch tree.  Without skipping a beat or telling Mike, I grabbed a handful of leaves from the tree and started munching on them.  Mike's eyes bugged out and his jaw loosened a little in confusion.  Without flinching I pointed out to him that the birch tree leaf is one bitter-tasting plant.  When his eyes sparkled in understanding Mike jumped up and ran to the tree.  From it he grabbed a whole stickfull of leaves and started stripping the leaves off with his teeth like a deer.  Eyes wide with a smile and birch leaves sticking out of his mouth he jumped into the convertible and fired up the engine.  Driving as fast as he could in the fading twilight and squealing around the on-ramp's turns, we headed out onto the interstate with the headlights off in the dark dusk.  We hoped that might wierd out those strange people at the rest area.

     After a quarter mile down the road, Mike flipped on the lights, and we resigned ourselves to not catching any fish and seeing Missoula in the darkness.  In the early nighttime we drove down the mountain into Missoula about an hour away.  Mike was hoping that our tongues would not swell up and choke us but I told him I never heard of birch trees being poisonous.

     "How many people do you know have eaten Birch leaves?"

7)

     Neither of us said anything about it, for doing so would make it real, and each of us just hoped it was our imagination.  But, after a certain point it was undeniable, and we had to say it.  Coming into Missoula after leaving the rest area with our lights off for a quarter mile, it was becoming undeniabley obvoius that our lights were dimming.  When we finally gave up on hope and officially acknowledged that fact to each other, the lights were pretty dim and we still had a way to go. 

     As they dimmed, we realized that we would soon be without lights in the dark, and so Mike speeded up.  We tried to draft off a pickup that passed us going seventy and followed him down the hill because our lights were about gone and it was very dark.  At some point we couldn't keep up with him and I held the flashlight out the window trying to spot the white line on the left side of the road so we could have some guidance. 

     Now we had our toes crossed as we neared town because the lights had already died and that meant the engine would soon go too.  With only five downhill miles left to go she started to misfire once or twice.  As the exit came into sight the engine had begun to buck.  When we pulled into town, it was struggling to remain alive and we waited very impatiently at a stoplight before going through while the engine kicked in its death throes.  Into a convenience store lot the engine gave its last few efforts at life and she died in the side lot of the convenience store. 

     Behind the store there was an empty lot and some train tracks.  It was pretty obvious that other indigents had occasionally spent the night in the bushes by the train tracks and so we thought that a good place to avoid scrutiny.  Pushing the car only thirty feet backwards toward the bushes we tucked her in and decided to deal with the problem in the morning.  Because we drove that first quarter mile with the lights off trying to scare the wierdoes, we made it all the way to the lot where we spent the night before the car died.  A quarter mile earlier and we wouldn't have made it off the freeway and we really would've been stuck pushing it.  The wierdoes inadvertantly did us a big favor by causing us to drive away with our lights off.

     Sometime after we fell asleep someone drove into the quickie mart and saw us sleeping in the back.  They must have had the wrong idea though, because they began honking, flashing their brights and hollaring.  My impression was that they thought Mike and me sleeping were a young couple getting it on.  Instead of embarassing us which I think was their intention, they only succeeded in waking us up.  Later that evening we were frightened awake by an unidentifiable roar.  As we both bounced up throwing our blankets off to see what was going on, we sheepishly realized this was the penalty for sleeping near the train tracks.  Looking out the rear window we could see the noisy monstrosity screaming and clattering by only thirty feet away. 

     When morning came, we began the task of diagnosing the problem.  Going over the car's electrical system in our heads we went through every part we could think of.  Most obviously, the generator would be the source of the lack of electricity.  Munching our jerky and granola we knew it couldn't be the generator because Mike had had it rebuilt just that summer.  We pushed the car to a service station where they charged the battery enough for us to drive a little bit and they gave us an address which belonged to a guy who rebuilt old generators.  We went in search of the generators, even though ours shouldn't have worn out yet.  Finding one which matched the car was tough  because nowadays cars use alternators.  The exact difference escapes me, but I believe it has to do with a generator charging all the time while alternators only charge when another part tells them to.

     We arrived at the generator shop which was well kept, freshly painted and in a rather residential part of town.  Whoever's name was on the side was dead and it was now run by his wife and son.  These people were great help.  We removed the generator and brought it in and the son took it apart to show us how it had burnt out, despite the shiny wires from its last rebuild.  The guy seemed to know almost exactly what the problem was though because he told us we didn't have the regulator changed with the generator.  Mike and I stood there dumbly and listened while he explained that when the generator burnt out the first time, the regulator probably got roasted too.  The regulator keeps all the electrical appliances from getting too much electricity and this one had not kept the new generator from getting toasted.  The son told us that any mechanic of old cars should have known that and we roasted the generator unnecessarily.  Incidentally, my folks blew out a rear window with an unregulated rear defroster, so this is an important part.

     We could only afford to have the guy give us a new generator; we couldn't afford to have him work on the car for us.  But he came out to the street where we were parked and gave us advice and even picked up a wrench a time or two despite not charging us for service.

     After the new generator and the new regulator were in place the car ran well again.  We went in to join him and his mom for some discussion and passed his project car, a convertible MG with an entirely new shiny V-something tucked in the little engine compartment.  They told us a little about their shop and their now-deceased father and husband.  After some talk we started asking how far it was to Couer d'Alene Idaho.  Mike and I had been looking forward to this town for some time as his father the truck driver said it was one of his favorite towns on his routes.  The shop people assured us that it was only another day's drive to Coeur d'Alene.  With much thanks, we bid them farewell.

     On the way out of town, we stopped at a grocery store to acquire some supplies to supplement our granola and jerky diet.  We ate all the bread, and the butter that was left over we tied up in a grocery bag and kept in the back seat.  We also thought it would be a good idea to wash some of the road funk off the car and spent some time that afternoon spraying it down at a quarter car wash.  Traffic in town was pretty heavy and the rush hour was hard on our old engine.  It started to heat up to the danger point and so we pulled over in some shade to let it cool down and to let the traffic ebb.

     While waiting for the car to cool off, Mike and I got into an argument about how you use the transaxle on a truck.  I had just finished a summer job working with truck drivers and watching them use the different gear combinations on the tractors, and Michael's old man was a truck driver too.  Each of us of course had different ideas of how to do it and we spent the better part of that cooling down hour arguing.  In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid thing to argue about, and I think spending so much time together was getting on both our nerves.  Furthermore, arguments with Michael are always fiery, even to this day, although at that time I didn't know him as well, and was miffed at the argument.

     When the time came, we both sulked back into the car each of us scooching toward our own side of the front seat.  Dashboard metal glinting in the fading sunlight we grumpily pushed off heading for Idaho. 

8)

     Sure enough, one more night and one more day on the road and we found ourselves pulling expectantly into Couer d'Alene, Idaho.  Our hopes were kindled as we saw mountains looming in the darkness and saw lights reflecting off the water we were following.  We were somewhat dissappointed as we came into town on what was apparently the main drag and found ourselves in the midst of cruising night.  Not much different than Omaha, I was a little bummed.  We also seemed to be in one of the seedier parts of town.  We needed to gas up and find a place to spend the night. 

     At the gas station, we asked a heavy bearded guy driving a wrecker if the rest area was going to be a good place to sleep.  He spent some time talking to us and told us the rest area would be fine.  Listening to our dismay at finding such a touristy place he told us to go north to some of the out of the way places up there.  He also noticed the California plates and told us not to expect people to be nice to us.  The car had Cali plates because in California if you keep up your license, you get to keep the plates that came with your car, and the plates on that Falcon dated all the way back to its birthdate. 

     Apparently, folks from California who were tired of California had been finding themselves in Idaho with money that was way beyond reach of the locals.  As a result, the locals were resentful that escalating real estate prices were making it impossible for them to afford houses and land in their native towns.  While this made sense to us, we still didn't think we midwestern guys should get shit for having antique California plates.  We left the wrecker driver and found our way to the rest area.

     The rest area was a nice place and we both called our parents.  As I suspected, my folks were pissed that a week had passed and I hadn't called.  Oh well.  Mike's mom reacted in much the same way and we smiled, when we hung up the phones, glad to be free of the hassles of parents.

     About that time the rest area's sprinklers kicked on and we grabbed the soap and shampoo.  In the freezing streams of water irrigating the grass, Mike and I in our shorts quickly cleaned everything we could before they turned off again.  As one set of sprinklers turned off, another turned on and so Mike and I ran from one set to another with soapy heads, bodies, and shorts.  The sprinkler heads rotated and so we had to sidestep in circles to keep the stream of water on whatever part needed rinsing.

     Shivering, refreshed, and CLEAN we dragged the coleman stove out of the trunk.  Mike's dad insisted we bring this stove along even though we didn't want to.  Since we had our arms twisted into bringing it, and we didn't want to hurt the old man's feelings, we brought it out and used it once for potatoes and onions.  While I cut up potatoes into thick slices and added the rings of onions Mike fell asleep.  My small stew was steaming away and my fellow traveler was snoring away.  I woke him up when I though our concoction was ready and it was good.  Not too sleepy to complain, Mike thought the potatoes should've been cooked longer.

     We had set up camp on the ground under a picnic shelter in case it rained and so that we would have a flat surface for the stove.  When we were finished eating we left the stove and curled up to snooze.  Sometime during the night we woke to rain.  Upon regaining some waking consciousness, we realized it was not rain but the sprinklers again.  Who knows why grass needs so much water in Idaho?  And why do they aime the sprinklers under the rain canopy?  Mike took our dirty frying pan to the most offensive sprinkler head and jammed its handle into the ground.  This way he blocked the sprinkler from watering us and the rest of the sprinklers didn't get us too wet.  The several other times during the night that the sprinklers turned on we heard the metallic sound of the pulses of water bouncing off the frying pan at its source.

     The next morning it occurred to us that the sprinklers had gone off every two hours during the night and were aimed at the concrete under the shelter as well;  we decided this was to prevent us from camping instead of just watering their grass.  When we awoke, the park attendant who was a decrepit very old man picking up littler was throwing us dirty looks which all but said we weren't supposed to be sleeping under the picnic tables.

     We brushed our teeth and cleaned the dirty dishes.  We packed the car all over again so it wouldn't be too messy and spent a couple of hours making sure the car was clean and shiny.  We ran into an old guy who was driving a big dually all the way from Alaska with an old British roadster in the bed.  Mike knew just what kind it was (he knows his roadsters well), and was very impressed.  The old dude had been hired and the dually was bought just to get the car from Alaska to wherever he was taking it.  The rich guy who hired him was letting him keep the truck when he was done if I remember correctly.  A very Zorbesque fellow, he had been around a little and had seen enough of the world to have some tales to tell. 

     As the morning sun filtered through the trees we wiped the dew from the car and parted ways from the old man in our sparkly red Falcon.  We were headed north to see a little of rural Idaho and it was a beautiful morning.

9)

     Driving north on highway 95 that morning I was again struck by feelings of correctness and beauty.  The land of northern Idaho is almost unparalleled in beauty.  We drove through slits in the tree cover through which we could only see the steep sides of the mountain ahead of us.  The mountains were a brown hue with a rich yellow tint and the trees were of an intermitent coniferous character with very dark green tones.  The mountains were neither forested nor barren, with patches of tree cover and patches where the trees stood singularly.  Everything was again as it should be and the Ford hummed along happily, matching our mood. 

     Moments like this were what made the trip worth it.  As we climbed and descended 6-11 percent grades through the pine trees and the sun, we didn't even say much to each other, for there was nothing to say.  It was all simply understood.  The sun and blue sky above.  The mountains and trees around us.

     On the way north we turned off to drive through one of the small towns to see what life was like up there on the edge of Canada in the shade of all that beauty.  The towns though were pretty much what anyone who has ever ventured beyond the walls of the cities would expect.  Small houses interspersed by the occassional deceased car up on blocks.  An abondoned, dying main street and downtown business district. 

     City dwellers laugh at the quaint-ness of such "business districts," but it is heartbreaking to see them dilapidated so thouroughly throughout the US.  As the Main Streets empty out, the cities fill up.  With the Main Streets all across the country go various lifestyles, and the diversity of options for us and our children of the future.  We say growth and progress are good, and we bend knee to the dogma of classical economics, but what do we do to retain those options for ourselves?  What do we say as the variety of life choices dwindles for us "free" Americans?  Small town high schools all around the country are forced to consolidate and shut their doors as the population shrinks and the high schoolers graduate and move to the cities. 

     City folks are proud of their own cities and that is good, but they are arrogant towards and they laugh at those who enjoy living away from the hassles of traffic all day.  They belittle those who wish to live where the air isn't funked up with bus, truck, and industry fumes.  They patronize and degrade what they do not understand, and thus do not know what possibilities lie out there for us.  We termed this "urban arrogance" and it was obvious as we motored through the quiet neighborhoods just how wrong such folks were.  I would much prefer going to sleep to and waking up with the sound of frogs chirping away in the spring and summer than to the ubiquitous traffic on our street in Omaha.

     We came to a campground, a state park.  This was camp Farrugut, Idaho, where in WWII it was packed with Navy recruits.  It overlooked a beautiful lake, but there was little training on that lake we were told.  There were a few left over silo-looking diving tanks and most of the barracks were torn down.  What made it obviously a military base was the four lane road with a wide grassy median on which were planted small trees.  These roads are omnipresent on every military installation I've been to.  Upon returning home and telling of the superlative beauty of northern Idaho and Camp Farrugut, I found out that my aunt had been stationed there for her nurse's training when she was in the Navy back in the 'forties.  She held the same opinion about the area.      The lake was Lake Pend d'Oreille and the Indians called it the lake with no bottom.  This was pretty accurate as we were informed the lake was 1800' deep, and the Navy did in fact do underwater accoustical testing near the Camp Farrugut installation.  The lake was almost fifty miles long on the map.  The mountain walls rose almost straight up out of the lake and continued on toward the sky.

     Now, Camp Farragut had a new life as a recreational park for any and all who ventured that way.  As such, Mike and I drove to a cove that was designated for swimming.  The afternoon was warm and we needed a dip in cold Lake Pend d'Oreille.  We drove down a very steep and windy road through the trees and came to the brown outbuildings that populate all Park facilities.  They were dressing rooms and restrooms.  Mike and I changed into swimming clothes between the cars in the parking lot.  With towels in hand we bounced down another trail and some stairs to a little lagoon that had been formed by piling up rocks across the mouth of what looked to be a natural jetty.  Someone must have also pulled all the rocks out of the lagoon as there was nothing but sand on the bottom.  We looked down through the clear water to see the swimmers slithering along fishily under the surface.  There were splashing children, bathing beauties, sunny moms, and crusty old dudes all out enjoying the water.  I wonder if they were locals or tourists like us.  And if they were locals, do they realize just how beautiful and refreshing it is to see this all for the first time?    

     Climbing into the cold water very slowly, you could see your whole body in the transparent water.  Shadows were coming down the side of the mountain that was the right bank of the lagoon.  The lagoon was beautiful and you could pretend you were a merman swimming along the bottom of the pool with your eyes open.  I swam toward the mouth once and out from the lagoon into the big lake, but the immensity was a little frightening and I swam back pretty quickly.  As I cavorted around underneath the ripples, Mike sat on the sandy jetty writing in his journal.  I climbed up next to him and we tried to pretend we weren't cold in the lake breeze. 

     When we felt we had soaked up enough water, sunshine, quietness, and goosebumps we traversed back to the car and climbed the hill slowly out.  Leaving the park for another small town nearby, we passed the park ranger who told us we were supposed to have paid to go swimming.  When we explained that it was an honest oversight, he smiled and let us go by.  He also commented that it was one of the best places to have a job.

     The town was Bayview, Idaho.  It was a few miles down a curvy road that skirted the mountains next to the lake.  We emerged from the foresty drive to descend into the town.  There wasn't much to it that we could see.  There was a marina, a boat yard, some apartments, a convenience store, and some homes.  The convenience store was very old and had an old-fashioned screen door that slapped shut behind you.  It was done in brown panneling and had an old man running the counter.  We bought an exrtravagant two dollar 2 liter of mountain dew, our contribution to the local economy.  With our half empty garbage bag of homemade granola and our bottle of soda pop we settled down for a while under a tree near the marina.  The afternoon was gorgeous as the shadows from the mountains passed by us.  We talked about a remote control boat that we could make to play on such lakes.  We also talked about real boats and had the chance to look over someone's sixteen foot O'Day sailer that was for sale.  It was a little expensive and we couldn't figure out how to get it on top of the car for the rest of the trip. 

     The ducks enjoyed our picnic as we shared the granola with them.  Soon enough though we headed up a road into some of the residential areas of town that overlooked the lake.  We found small and large houses that would've been a delight to own.  The situation described by the wreckeer guy the night before was pretty obvious though as we came to a place on the mountain where all the trees had been scalped and there was a brand new home sitting amid the piles of dirt and the clearing in the trees.  It was so extravagant and invasive compared to the other houses that it was easy to understand people's objections to such development.  Up the road there were other houses in similarly naked plots that made the the place look like a suburban development. 

     Looking at the whole situation, one could make an argument that such new construction created jobs for the locals.  It was also pretty easy to see how this kind of development priced the area out of reach of the locals.  And what about when the new houses were finished?  There would need to be more and more new houses being built in order to sustain those new jobs.  It certainly was sad to think that the whole area would be developed that way sooner or later.

     Stuck between the sadness of inevitable development and the happiness of the beauty of the lake as it was we headed back to Camp Farragut so that we could make camp for the evening.  We found the camp headquarters and filled out the registration for the last campsite available.  We wandered around the room for there was a small historical display of the camp's Navy days.  There was a intricate display of the knots the sailors would've been familiar with, and many pictures and artifacts from the base. 

     While we were wandering around the display room, we overheard the maitron at the counter say "Those guys took the last campsite, just like a couple of California boys."

     Mike and I were taken aback.  There had been a spot on the registration for the car's license plates and we had filled in the California number, but we were nevertheless not from california.  Furthermore, we just managed to get the last campsite.  If we would've come in last would the counter lady say "That couple just took the last campsite, just like an Idaho couple"?  Certainly not.

     Smarting from that small taste of bitterness, we left.  We found our way to the coveted campsite, and amid all the other campers put our car to rest.  Campgrounds are always amusing because more often than not they resemble dirt parking lots.  This one was no different save the beautiful pine trees, and we found ourselves surrounded by crowded neighbors.

     We stretched the tarp out for a tent, tying it between the picnic table and the trees on our site.  After making some dinner, whatever that may have been (probably venison jerky and granola), we unrolled our sleeping bags in the dirt and went to sleep.

     I was snoozing soundly when Mike woke me up to prepare for the coming thunderstorm.  We packed the car and put the roof up as it started to drizzle.  Amid thunderclaps and lightning we hurredly dug a ditch around our lean-to tent to ensure that the water didn't run into our small house.  As the thunderstorm worsened and began to acquire gargantuan proportions, Mike made the ultimate sacrifice.  To protect the car from hail, he draped his sleeping bag and blankets over the hood and trunk lids.  Not so sure if this was wise, I let Mike do it without offering my own bags.  Since it was Mike's car and I thought he had gone a little overboard, I also didn't feel too terribly guilty as he shivered the rest of the night on one small sheet and the bare ground. 

     The next morning we saw that the car had made it and so had Mike, neither too much the worse for it.  As I had tired of always repacking the car every morning, while Mike took care of that I walked down to the lake shore and skipped rocks across the clear water.  It was cooler and there was a breeze, so the part of the lake I was looking at had some chop.  This made it a little tougher to skip rocks because if they didn't hit the crest of the wave they wouldn't skip very well. 

     I headed back through this small paradise to the parking lot where the car was finally packed and some of the RV's had already cleared out.  Once more into Bayview, we couldn't resist a parting look at the marina and the mountains.  We abandoned the car and took another swim off the boat launch docks.  We swam amid the boats in the harbor and wondered what was beneath us in the bottomless lake.  Getting a little creepy about the infinity beneath us, we swam toward shore and said goodbye to the little town.  

     We got on one of the back highways and traveled up and down through the mountains.  Another beautiful day with few clouds, and we enjoyed it from the best seats in the house.  We came to a small clearing and Mike wanted to play with the clattery transmission again.  As he fished the tools out of the trunk and slid under the car, I made myself comfortable on this remote highway shoulder.  I was a little impatient with trying the fix the car again, but couldn't think of a better place to sit and wait.

     Mike looked and prodded and poked for a while but didn't get far.  High up in the mountains on the side of a quiet highway didn't sound like the best place to disable the car either.  A plane passed low overhead and we waved.  To our pleasure, he wobbled his wings in return. 

     Much of the trip we had spent time contemplating the Indians that lived here before the Europeans arrived, and those Europeans that had ventured West to find new lives in the new world.  It was striking how many times I found myself in amazement at the courage and the lives of both of these groups of people.  As an adult in America, we are never far from "civilization" or from help.  Our cars are in continual need of maintenance and we have no idea how to garner food from our immediate environment.  Indians on the other hand traveled on foot and on horses, with only a small group camp they could call a home.  The greater feeling of connectedness and isolation to and from society that we feel would have been incomprehensible to them.  They may have felt that connectedness but it would've been more to the earth around them.  They probably wouldn't have been as afraid as we are of being away from people.  The world that seems intimidating if there are not enough fellow humans around would've felt comfortable and proper to them.

     The settlers and migrants may or may not have felt that same connectedness as the Indians would've, but would have been quite self dependent.  When our car broke down, we had service stations we could ask for help and parts.  If a wagon broke down, you would have had to fix it on the trail using whatever resource was available.  You may have had to have felled trees to create spare parts for the wagon.  This is such a different experience and attitude than just calling AAA.  As our technology has increased allowing us more potential as a society and as individuals, we have taken the luxuries so for granted that we are a weaker and less adaptable sort individually than those that came before us.  If we won't leave our houses because the security systems aren't working, or won't go on a road trip because the car is already five years old, how would we have dealt with such emptiness of the land, and such obstacles that really are threatening?  We allow ourselves to worry and be held back by things that didn't even enter into the lives of those before us.  We allow overspecialization of the economy to take over learning for ourselves and any sort of self reliance, because money will take care of our problems for us.  Instead of dealing with our obstacles head on and with the help of our companions, we allow a specialist to do it for us.  Consequently most of us don't know about the vehicles that shuttle us to work every day and most of us couldn't fix them if we had to.  Compared though to those who would've walked the continent in order to see the world, I must say we've wimped out quite a lot.  Compared to those who faced crossing the continent in wagons without anything but dirt trails for highways, what are we when we won't even take a gravel road on the map?  How hard would someone with the ambition to walk across the US with a pushcart laugh at those of us who won't drive into Mexico because our insurance companies won't cover us there?  Compared to those Indians who watched the sun rise and fall for millenia with responsibilities only to eat, survive, and bear the next generation,  how do our nine to five indoor lighting climate control lives add up?

     It makes me wonder if we were going forward or backward and the feeling struck me again while Michael tinkered with the tranny five or six thousand feet into the mountains under the sun filtering through the thin air.  What would it look like with nothing but a dirt trail for the road?  How scary is it now that the car doesn't seem to be working right, and how would we have dealt with such problems a hundred years ago?  Soon enough though, Mike gave up and we drove away, out of the dreams in my head and into the twentieth century. 

     As the afternoon waned we came into a larger town on the other end of Lake Pend d'Oreille called Sandpoint.  We bought a couple loaves of bread and some honey and pulled into what seemed to be the cruising strip in town.  Along the beach there ran a road that was packed full of cars and the town had a nostalgic touristy feel to it.  Having been reclusive for the past few days it was somewhat refreshing to be back with many people. 

     We sat on the sand in front of an upscale looking hotel and ate our bread and honey while the sun set and pushed another day off into the eternity of the past.  The lake was too cold to swim here, and the air was downright unsummery to a Nebraska kid.  Shivering and munching and marvelling we watched the sun slip away to the west and headed back through the vacationers to the car.  We met a couple of young Canadians who informed us that we pronounced Canada far too flatly.  We pointed out that we were now in the USA, and we weren't the ones who sounded funny at all.  They were nice young women but we didn't stay too long.

     We had planned to drive across inland Washington, "The Washington Desert" we had been told, during the daytime so as to help the forever hot engine.  We had gotten used to the needle on the guage running just below the redline, but didn't want to push our luck.  To a cafe in search of coffee we went.  We found one in the touristy part of town with a plump momly waitress.  As we slurped away trying to ingest all the coffee we could a pickup parked across the street.  This pickup had the most viking-looking of beds sitting in back.  A frame and headboard constructed of tree trunks, it barely fit into the pickup.  With visions of happy newlyweds and bellies full of coffee we headed off into the Washington emptiness in the dark.

10)

     We drove through some very empty desolate areas that night and pulled into a strange little settlement for gasoline about eleven or twelve.  This place was our only option for gas and it also sold beer on the front porch.  The store was OK but what made it remarkable was the absolute weirdness of the locals towards us.  At the time I had long hair and maybe we weren't recently washed up, but it didn't seem that we should've come off that oddly.  Whatever it was there were many guys larger than us sitting on the front porch drinking beer out of the singles cooler there and we didn't think it a great idea to stay very long.  Without snacks or sodapop we took off, not wanting to try the tolerance of the drunken desert dwellers.  We were glad to be leaving behind the strangest gas station on our trip.

     As the night dragged on we eventually rejoined the freeway and continued through the darkness.  This time we had the roof up and we were getting light headed from the gas fumes.  We were also falling asleep.  In an effort to avoid asphyxiation by gas fumes and to stay awake, Mike rolled down his window and exclaimed that the smel of the desert air reminded him of the marine corps.  The only decent thing about his numerous desert trips with the corps he noted was the smell.  The sleepy buzz of the gas and the hour wasn't that pleasant and we looked for the next cafe for coffee again.  These gas fumes were the problem we tried to address in the carboureator back in Missoula before we fled the acid questers there.  Off in the distance the neon glow of a gas station and the wonderful words "CAFE open 24 hours" lit up the black inky night in the town of George, Washinton. 

     We came off the freeway into the gas station and pulled under their canopy of light.  It was refreshing to get out of the stinky cab of that car and into the clear night air.  The effect was odd as we filled up the gas staton and could see little beyond the glow of the flourescent lighted rain canopy besides blackness of night.  Pulling the car up to the cafe, Mike noticed happily that there were cute waitresses at this one.  The name of the place was an odd "Martha's Inn."  I had no idea what significance there could possibly be in a name like that, but I agreed with Mike that the waitresses looked allright and thus we went in. 

     Upon entering we found that the waitresses were the regular matronly type and that the pretty ones were in a booth enjoying some fries.  We made our way to the booth next to theirs and smiled as we sat down.  The waitress was a friendly one and she brought us cup after cup of coffee.  After a while the young women beside us got up and with a smile, left.  Mike and I disgustedly rebuffed ourselves for letting opportunity slip away. 

     We had embarked on this journey to suck some juice out of life.  Part of that was meeting and talking to people.  And here, because neither Mike nor I were very brazen, we had missed the opportunity to meet a pair of lovely young women from Washington or wherever in the middle of the night.  Promising ourselves that we would not let such opportunities slip by again we begrudgingly began to eat our food. 

     Both of us had read Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek, and we tried to take some of Zorba's adventurous attitude toward life into ourselves for this trip.  Zorba mentions in that book something along the lines of "throwing myself upon the breast of mother earth to suck from her teat the milk of life."  Here, Mike and I had missed a storybook opportunity because we were not adept enough at throwing ourselves upon mother earth's breast.  We ate in a disgusted silence.

     Very few cars were out that late night and we noticed every pair of headlights going by.  One pair turned off the highway and headed toward our gas station.  As the vehicle came into the sphere of light we saw it was a silver Honda CRX similar to the one the girls drove off in (probably it had air conditioning, cruise control, went over fifty miles an hour, got over ten miles to each gallon, and didn't overheat going up mountains).

     Out of the car hopped the two young women.  Mike and looked at each other quizzically and a little guiltily because whatever they had forgotten, we now had pledged ourselves to sieze such opportunities and if they came back into the cafe a second time, there was no excuse not to talk to them.  It's much easier being brave when there is no way to test such bravado.

     Our convictions needed no testing though because they walked in the cafe and headed our way.  It looked like we wouldn't have to talk first after all.  They introduced themselves and slid into our booth. 

     "Anyone who pulls into a place like this at three a.m. looking like you two do, has to have a story to tell." 

     Well she was right, but we told it slowly, so as not to give it all away at once.  We talked for a couple of hours and were invited to the tall one's mom's coffee shop in Seattle.  They were both younger than Mike and I and for some reason seemed to drive between Spokane and Seattle kind of often.  They were granola type young women with long kinky hair and Teva sandles.  They told us about a canyon in which kids had keggers and about the beautiful view we would have off an upcoming bridge this morning.  The kindly waitress kept us well stocked with coffee and we visited with the young lovelies for two hours before they needed to be on the road homeward bound.  After a dozen cups of coffee each, and much happier Mike and I retired to the car just as the sun was pinking the eastern horizon.  We were both so sleepy that we fell asleep almost immediately.

11)

     We awoke in George, Washington in the parking lot of Martha's Inn at seven o'clock, just as the waitress who served us early that morning was getting off shift.  The sun had risen and warmed the interior of the car up enough to make me sweaty underneath my wool blanket.  When we went to sleep it was only five o'clock, and we had drank at least a pot of coffee each.  Therefore, when we awoke at seven it was with eyes wide and a persistant coffee buzz.  We threw the blankets in the back seat, put the top down and waved goodbye to the waitress.

     It was nice heading West in the morning because the sun was not yet hot and was behind us instead of in front of us.  An hour or so after we had started we bridged an enormous and beautiful canyon that plummeted below us suspended as we were high in the air on the spindly bridge.  This was undoubtedly the canyon of which the young women of last night spoke.  In the daylight on two hours of sleep, meeting the two maidens the previous night seemed more like a dream than reality.  Their ephemeral company was doubtlessly a figment of our tired minds, yet we looked around as we drove the highway in broad daylight that they drove in dawn just two hours earlier. 

     We eventually made it out of the Washington Desert but not until it had gotten good and hot and we hadn't escaped worrying about the engine after all.  We excitedly came into the mountains but found ourselves pulling over halfway up to let the car cool off.  What were termed on highway signs as scenic overlooks, we had renamed scenic overheats.  At one of these, I left Mike to go hop around the rocky valley on our left.  As I walked away and jumped the guardrail, I saw that Mike struck up a conversation with a mother who had climbed out of an RV that had apparently chosen this particular scenic overheat to have an overlook themselves.  The last thing I heard as I descended the rockpile of the roadbed wa her chastising Mike and I for something wrong with the car.  Glad to not be a part of it I climbed and jumped across the boulders down in the valley.  I noticed my Teva sandals cracking and beginning to tear at the ball of my foot as I reached up to climb a large boulder.  "Off road sandals indeed" I thought to myself.  Oh well, I was enjoying the flora and the rocky terrain when I finally made it to a high rock and tarzan yelled to Mike across the small valley.  It was only a hundred yards or so away and the traffic noise from the climbing interstate was quite audible. 

     I didn't want to be gone too long and so I headed back across the boulders and arrived at the road shortly.  Mike had disengaged himself from the pesky mom and as we lumbered away from the RV, Mike grumbled about the obnoxiousness of said woman.  Both of us had gotten enough shit from our mothers about this trip and Mike had been discharged from the Marines before I met him in college.  He didn't think he needed to be bossed around by someone he did not know for we were both adults ourselves.  I laughed, not having had to have dealt with her myself.  We made the pass and coasted down the other side, sending the temperature needle plummeting.

     Soon enough we came into the metropolitan area of Seattle.  Guiltily we drove through it.  I knew I should stop and visit my second cousin Steve, but we were passing through in the middle of the work day and I didn't want to hassle with trying to find his suburb and his house.  Nevertheless, I did feel guilty because Steve helped introduce me to silly adventures, taking me along on a RAGBRAI ( the des moines Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) when I was a wee lad of fifteen.  We must have come through Seattle on a bad day because it was drizzly and overcast.     We circled south around Puget Sound and headed expectantly toward the Olympic Peninsula.  The young lovelies of the night had told us it only takes about four hours to get around the peninsula.  This meant that after we got around the peninsula, we would be finished with the first leg of the journey, and ready to begin the second.  I was looking forward to seeing the coastline as I had only once been to the Pacific Ocean and was excited to see the rocky wild shores that I had seen so often in postcards and travel literature.

     We picked up highway 101 in Olympia and snapped a picture of the highway sign.  Driving north we passed through small seaside towns and muddy sloughs where people waded in the mud searching for clams.  Apparently these backwater streams filled up when the tide was high and emptied into broad mud flats surrounding small streams when the tide was out.  The briny smell of the saltwater mud was pretty rank to a midwesterner not familiar with the smell of the oceans. 

     We ventured up one of the interior roads and found ourselves a nice spot beside a stream and its bridge where we ate some of our unspoilable foods.  We followed the road until we came to one of the Olympic Forest campgrounds.  As the forest canopy closed overhead, the road decomposed and we bounced down the singletrack road carefully.  When another car would come the other way we would have to pull off the road so that each car had two wheels on and two off where we passed each other.  We made our way up to the campground which was pretty empty and we wandered around the sites a little bit.  The air was close and stagnant.  The ground was mushy and the plant leaves were very broad and damp.  The sun didn't penetrate through the foggy air and the dense canopy to reach us soggy ground dwellers.  The atmosphere was just what I would have expected in a rain forest and I was surprised to find all this right here in the northern US.  As we were leaving, we read some of the free park literature and found that this was the only rainforest in the continental US.  I hadn't known until that point that a rainforest could exist outside of the tropical and subtropical areas of the globe. 

     As we continued north, it became obvious that the girls' four hour estimate to circle the peninsula was way off.  It looked like we would not make it off the peninsula tonight and we pulled over at an auto parts store to try and fix the gasoline stench.  We started by replacing the fuel filter, and while that helped, it helped only a very little.  Then we tried to fit a new fuel pump on the engine.  The new pump, although listed as compatible, didn't quite fit the block and we returned it because there was no real evidence that the first one didn't work.  As we worked on the engine and turned it on and off, it became obvious that the new fuel filter with its new hoses and clamps had in fact solved the problem. 

     A middle aged fellow had been hanging around with us while we were working on the car and was telling stories about his old Ford Falcon. (We seemed to pick up a lot of these guys everywhere we stopped, talking about their old cars, usually also Falcon or their days in the Marines)  When we had solved the gas stink problem, Mike began talking about the wierd behavior of the tranny, which as I described earlier like to downshift at high speed with little provocation.  The fellow knew of a tranny shop that was good, respectable, and cheap.  The shop though had already shut its doors and would not open until tomorrow morning at nine a.m.  It was still fairly early and we didn't know where to spend the night.  The fellow said he would've offered us to sleep in his house or back yard but was afraid of how his wife would react to two strangers camped out in their back yard. 

     Then he suggested that we take the ferry to Canada.  Promising it would only be maybe ten dollars each, and that it was ok to sleep on the beach in Canada we headed down to the waterfront to find the ferry.  We made it with only a half hour before the boat departed.  We parked the car in an overnight parking lot that cost ten dollars a night.  We were worried a little about our posessions because the doors wouldn't lock, so we crammed as much as possible into the trunk before we paid our ten dollars.  We ran to the boat and purchased our tickets at twenty dollars each.  Because the ferry was soon departing, we had to make quick decisions and found ourselves sucked into this overnight excursion fifty dollars worth, instead of only twenty dollars, as we initially expected.

     Well, what was the money for after all?  We rode on the open top deck as long as we could stand the cold breeze.  The sun set over the ocean during our hour-long ride across Peuget Sound and we pulled into the harbor of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada with enough light left to see the rocks and piers of this old harbor.  I had never arrived at an unknown harbour by ship before in my life and I did my best to savour the experience from my chilly top-deck seat.  Victoria is a well-kept town with big beautiful european looking buildings overlooking the harbor.  I have since seen historical photos documenting early shipping in Victoria and the rocks in the harbour looked just the same (as one might expect).

     When we got off the boat, all the passengers had to go through customs.  Mike and I had to answer several questions in rooms seperate from each other.  We also waited while the customs officials poked and prodded through our rolled up sleeping bags and when there was apparently no reason to retain us they let us in.  In retrospect, I suppose we looked a little questionable with only sleeping bags as luggage and a few days without a wash.  We climbed up the ladder and noted that the ferry left the next morning at eight. 

     I was looking forward to enjoying a legal beer at a pub, as Canda's drinking age was eighteen or nineteen instead of the US's twenty-one.  We walked for hours that night looking at the town and found that no pubs are open on sunday night.  We walked through the old buildings and looked for a place to sleep for the night.  There was no beach to sleep on like the man had said there would be, and the places to hide two sleeping bags were few.  Meanwhile, a jazz trio played on the docks in the harbor next to a cuople of hundred-thousand dollar powerboats whose cabin lights were on and from which you could hear voices and laughter.  That would've been a nice place to sleep, but we didn't have a cabin cruiser.  We searched through really shitty parts of town, through residential neighborhoods, we even thought about crashing under some bushes in the front yard of the largest and fanciest hotel in town.  There were too many people by the hotel's bushes, the scary part of town was simply too scary, and the residential parts just didn't have much room.  As we walked we noticed that there were many more of the British MG convertible roadsters, which must've been a result of the original British nationality of the province.  Mike became so sleepy at points that I literally had to drag him by the hand as his head bounced up and down groggily.  We walked so long that we traded roles and Michael dragged and prodded me when I longed only to lie down on the nearest grass.  Eventually we settled on a park and tried to be as far as possible away from roads and walkways.  There was a smaller marina nearby and in the twelve seconds before we fell asleep, I heard the clank of lines on sailing masts.

     We awoke early in the morning underneath the three pine trees in the park.  As I layed in my sleeping bag waiting for Mike to get up I watched someone walk to the marina.  I hoped he wouldn't notice us and he didn't.  We were up early enough that we had plenty of time to catch the ferry and walked downtown looking for coffee. 

     We found a small yuppie shop that seated about six people tightly.  We bought some bean from the lovely Greek girl at the counter and crowded into a table in the corner by a window.  While we waited and watched downtown come alive, a couple met and had breakfast before they went off to their jobs.  How strange that they all had jobs from nine in the morning until six in the afternoon around which the rest of their lives were organized.  We sipped our coffee and the young couple split for the day.  While we watched everyone go off to their daily drudgery, we walked down to the waterfront and caught the ferry back to the US.

     Arriving in the US to our unmolested automobile, I was struck by the shabby appearance of Port Angeles compared to Victoria we just left.  The businesses looked run down and the streets were cluttered.  Maybe this was just a different part of town than that which we left, but there was the nagging impression that the difference is a Canadian-US difference.  Maybe the difference in governing styles allowed for the cities to look a little nicer than ours.  Who knows? 

12)

     Back on highway 101 continuing around the Peninsula and heading south we discussed at great length the debate surrounding logging and environmentalism.  This was brought up by the ubiquity of big beautiful pine and deciduous trees interspersed along our route with swaths of naked mountainside.  Both sides of that debate are easy to understand.  How are we supposed to put more loggers out of work when the economy in that area is already very tight and slow?  How is it that one species of small owl deserves more protection than the third and fourth generation of working men and their families who helped build this nation into what it is? 

     On the other hand, if all the trees are cut down, what are those loggers and their families going to do then?  Furthermore, if a prominent species of bird is almost extinct, then chances are the rest of the ecosystem is pretty stressed, and if we do too much harm against the ecosystems of this world, than there will be nothing for us to live on and nothing to pass on to our children.  And then there is also the argument that what right do we humans as one species have to make extinct hundreds (thousands) of other species because they stood in the way of economic "development"?

     This discussion continued at length for a few days while we passed through the Northwest logging areas.  Mike and I took alternatively different sides of the debate to discuss and came to the conclusion that it is a challenge to figure out how to sort this problem out so that there is work for the working folk of the region without compromising our ecosystems as well.  There must be something said for the sadness of seeing the forests end at the straight edges of barren clearcuts and wondering whether or not the forests will be able to regenerate in those areas in our lifetimes, or ever.

     Passing through one of the smaller towns on this stretch, we pulled over to gas up and I waited in the car while Mike ran into a gas station because it was his turn to pay.  I had my hair up under a hat, well aware of the intensity of the dislike of unemployed loggers for "hippies" and "environmentalists" (code words for longhair-types).  Mike came out of the gas station laughing and hoo-hooing.  As he climbed in the car he told me of a t-shirt he had seen inside.

     The depiction on the t-shirt was of a longhair-type nailed to a pine tree via a very large spike through his forehead to the tree.  He was haning there minus pants and had been provided a spotted-owl enema, feathers and spotted-owl feet protruding from his posterior.  The inscription on the t-shirt explained just how the spotted owl would go instinct which was by a process akin to that which the picture described.

     Thinking this a bad place to hang out in case someone spotted stray hairs straggling out from under my bonnet, we left.  We passed a pair of women who had sauntered up to the station on their horses.  Mike's describing the t-shirt to me explained just why the horse ladies scowled back at me when I said hi to them.

     We had driven all afternoon stopping only at gas stations and grocery stores searchiì¥Á[    

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ    

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ  

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
ì¥Á[   

---

ø¿

---

æù[1]
bjbjââ 

---

.!

---

€j€jÙõ[1]
ÿÿÿÿÿÿlDDDDDDDXv,v,v,8®,
 The ghost was a long ways from the road work though, at least a few miles, and still seemed out of place.

     This being about as strange as the night needed to get, we started looking extra hard at places to sleep.  The campgrounds were, as I said, full, and we spent a lot of time cruising through and between the towns looking for lodging.  We eventually found a campground that had a light on and seemed to have enough room to at least park the car next to the office-trailer.  Even though it was three in the morning, we banged on the door and the caretaker was up late.  Since it was so late and we didn't have enough cash for the normal fee, she gave us half price and we went to find a campsight.  The sight we chose had a small body of water, perhaps a large creek near it and we rolled out our sleeping bags behind the car with our heads toward the reflections on the water. 

     We awoke to ducks quacking away in the grey morning and tried to squeeze deep underneath our covers to sneak another hour of shuteye in between quacks.  The folks at neighboring campsights stared at us quite rudely that morning when we finally climbed out of our bags and stretched.  Maybe it was the lack of a tent.  Before we got started we dragged our soap, toothbrushes, and towels up to the wash house and had thouroughly neccessary and refreshing showers.

13)

     In the northern part of the coastal leg of our journey, our tranny still was clattering and making noise.  So once again, we decided to pull over and wee if we could battle it at all.  We had deemed that what was necessary was another flex plate, the old one was cracked.  Mike had decided that he would fix it and this worried me because he has a lot of conviction.  We would be here for several hours trying to do this. 

     Where we pulled of the road, there was a gas station with a few restored cars and a couple of wrecks parked out near the highway illustrating that it was an auto recycling business.  It fit into the surrounding decor fairly well, as it was of a brown wooden build wtained nicely with the characteristic black mold crawling up from the ground.  Inside it was cluttered with parts all hanging on the walls and a pair of fat Harley guys at the counter.

     Mike described the flex plate he wanted and we wandered through the graveyard looking for the apporpriate Ford for the organ donation.  We found one and managed to wrestle it off, although it was not easy.  I have spent far too many hot afternoons in the dust of our country looking up at the bottoms of cars with Michael; this was more of the same.

     We payed for the piece and left.  When we got out front to our car to begin the work, Mike and I discussed some of the wierd vibes we were getting from those running the shop.  After a couple of lackluster efforts at making the tranny come apart, Mike decided that what runs, needs not fixing. 

     This was quite a relief for me because the necessary operation would have required that we pull the tranny completely off and away from the engine before we could even access the flex plate itself.  I knew this was going to be a long process and looking at the black oily mess from the bottom, I knew also that I didn't want to do it.  The wierd vibes from the shop, and the complexity of the job apparently convinced Mike that this was better tried at home in the garage in North Dakota.  I heartily agreed with him (I would already be home by then anyway and wouldn't have to help).  We loaded all the tools back into the trunk and clattered off down the road.

14)

     We headed out that grey morn to drive down the coast.  While highway 101 is the coastal highway, the ocean is not often visible where we were.  We did see lots of pine trees though, and old logging towns and generally pretty scenery.  I must add here that I was a little dissappointed by the Washington coastline.  It was not that the area is not very beautiful, but rather that I missed the subtle beauty of the area by expecting spectacular beauty.  Much of our trip was saturated with spectacular beauty, and that is what draws people to places like Yellowstone.  Subtle beauty is possessed in different quantities and qualities by every place and is what gives each part of the earth its own particular worth.  It is what keeps Iowans in Iowa even when they are the butt of the rest of the country's jokes.

     We stopped for breakfast that morning at a covered wagon.  It was a chuckwagon in imitation of the old west migrants.  This was an all-you-can-eat pancake stop, something I had become familiar with on my bike rides through Iowa (RAGBRAI).  The dining area was large (for a covered wagon) and square.  It looked like a covered wagon on the outside but was several times larger. 

     In this covered wagon were a few interesting characters.  One that caught my eye and seemed to fit into this all-you-can-eat pancake motif rather well was a cyclist.  He had lycra shorts barely hiding gigantic frog legs while the rest of his body seemed emmaciated.  His bike was a nice touring style and had all the gear necessary for a long tour loaded up on various panniers.  Feeling Zorbesque and overcoming our quiet natures we introduced ourselves to this fellow traveler and asked him his story.

     He explained to us in a thick Austrian accent that he was an exchange student here in the US and before he returned to his native land he decided to take his bike across our country to see it better.  He had started in New York and was planning to go to San Francisco. 

     If he was going from New York to San Francisco, he was way off course up here in the Washington-Oregon area.  He continued to explain that there were some people he wanted to see in Kentucky, Minnesota, Utah, and Washington.  Therefore his ride across the US was following a North-South zig-zag pattern that had to multiply his mileage several times.  When asked how long he had been on the road he answered about four months.

     Another pair of bikers had noticed us talking to this Austrian bike wildman and waved to us also.  There were quite a few bikers at this all-you-can-eat pancake place (these are good places to load up on carbohydrates early in the day) and it was a drizzly day, making it seem even more like those many Iowa mornings with a bike saddle jammed between your sore legs.  This second pair of bikers appeared to be something of a middle-aged couple and weren't in quite the same shape as the Austrian (who would be?).  But they looked to be enjoying themsleves.

     We stayed at the chuckwagon for some time, as we had been hammering hard to catch up on lost time.  This was also a valuable food source as we had eaten most of our homemade granola and venison jerky by this point.  What wasn't yet eaten was beginning to look undesireable.  We could take with us as many precious pancake calories as we could fit into our stomachs.  Another nice thing about such pancake shindigs is that they are fairly reasonably priced.

     We had been in a hurry to get west since we had spent so much time goofing around in Idaho.  The downside was that we had not had enough time to really see a lot of what we passed.  All that is with me for those long nights on the road are ephemeral visions of, for example, alpine-looking villages tucked into small mountain valleys.  They would have a small cluster of lights over which the road passed, a few blocks of downtown, and residential areas squeezed in wherever they could find a foothold. 

     I had feelings of mammoth walls of mountains crowding me into the car and the freeway; dark outlines of coniferous trees keeping the mountains blanketed and sillhouetted against the starry skies.  One stop where we pulled off to return our coffee rental to the good earth, we could hear the engine on the Falcon gurgling away happily.  Looking up the hill to the car what we saw were the two rocket-tailights ready to blast off into the night.  Careful, don't step in the stream!

     As I was blowing loudly and incompetently on Mike's harmonica late one evening, we came down a hill on the highway into a town.  Driving at night so consistently really leaves you disoriented.  You leave one place, follow the signs and the next morning you are somewhere else.  It's even weirder when the somewhere else only relates to you on a map. 

     "This is where we are?"

     Into this town we travel, passing over the mouth of whatever river dumped into the ocean at that point.  Nothing to identify said town, but a map, a sign, and a handful of lights reflecting across the water as we traverse the bridge.  This and bad harmonica music.

     Many nights we drove with the top down so that we were chilly, and thus awake.  "Awake-alive," Mike would say as he tapped his feet on the floor and wiggled his legs to help him remain conscious.  All I did was shiver underneath the wool blankets we used for sleeping in the car, trying to huddle the blanket around the vent of the heater, slowing the departure of our warm air into the starry cold nights. 

     Many times we stopped at cafes and coffee shops to load up on caffeine to assist us in our nightly sojourning.  Between midnight and three a.m. we would find ourselves in front of a graveyard-shift waitress ordering coffee.  A nice sight to bloodshot road eyes overstrained by staring at the same dotted white line too long, the coffee steamed away between our hands.

     In numerous all-night cafes Michael introduced me to one of his many talents.  When driving he would always push to go farther than I and would not give in to stopping for the night as early as I would.  When we arrived at the coffee shops though, many times I found myself talking to his eyelids sinking over his glazed orbs.  As I understood there was no point to be made to a sleeping man I simply watched as his chin would settle onto his chest and the coffee would steam into his face.  Staring at the top of his head, I simply asked for more coffee when the waitresses came by and looked at me puzzledly.

     At one point in the dusk we came around a curve at eighty miles an hour (the engine was probably hot), and had to swerve into the next lane behind a tractor trailer to avoid a wooden obstacle in the road.  Stopping to see what it was and to save future motorists from vehicular impalement we pulled off and ran back to the object.  We lifted the heavy wooden box and were surprised by its great weight.  "That'ld knock the shit outa anyone who hit it!"  We carried the heavy box to the side of the road and dropped it hurriedly so as to not surprise any other vehicles coming around the curve at eighty by our presence in the middle of the lane.  In this way we felt we fulfilled our civic duty that day; what good boy scouts.

     After we wasted enough time at the chuckwagon (both parties of cyclists had already left), we rumbled down the 101 ourselves.  All these important and exciting adventures already behind us and we haven't even turned around yet.

     We didn't go too far that day, as we were somewhat burned out for hammering so hard the last few days.  We did make it to Cannon Beach, Oregon.  Once there we drove the car up on a curb in a park where we were shielded by some cedar-type shrubs to play with the clanky tranny again.  Not much different, we drove to a beach where we did our best to go swimming. 

     As we pulled into the parking lot for the beach, Mike and I winked at each other for there was a sillhouette against the late afternoon sun over the Pacific of a young lovely combing out her wet hair on a bench.  Posed sideways with a leg up and her hair hanging down, we drove up and parked next to her and her boyfriend's car.  Turning to get a look at the sea nymph in good light, the girlfriend walked out of the changing rooms.  We realized then that the silhouette we had seen was a skinny guy with long hair. 

     Now, I must say that I get a kick out of the occasional young male who pulls up next to me at a stoplight look