We're up in a cloud, we're really high, I've been pressing
the gas and am not getting much acceleration. We're surrounded by a thick
blanket of fog or clouds or something which has cut my speed drastically. We
can't see shit. The roads are wet and we'd better slow down. We're at about
zero visibility and we're going down a very steep steep hill. This is terrible.
Things are better now; the roads are wet, but the worst is
over. We're in Montana! Just driving through on the way North. ShaNaNa was at
Woodstock which ties into something that Ron and Russ were saying in the
Badlands about a Woodstock reunion and what a joke it was because Aerosmith was
playing and it was profit oriented.
Billings is 99 miles from here! We're gonna have to stop by
there and pay our respects since Mr. Billings let us use his jack and was an
all-around decent guy. If it weren't for Mr. Billings, we wouldn't be able to
go to Billings.
Things are going pretty smooth. I've been holding a crap for
awhile now, across state lines. The hills in Montana are steep. We're, like,
the only car on the road. We have not passed anybody and nobody has passed us. It's
just us, the rain, the pavement and the windshield wipers. These are really
pretty dangerous conditions here, but we can handle it. Even without any
wipers.
3:30 am: My God, it's pissing down rain in the form of a
strong gale!! We've pulled off the interstate and are looking for a place to
gas-up, use the restrooms and fix the windshield wipers. I mean, it's a haze of
rain everywhere! There's a sign up ahead, but we can't read it through the
gale. It's closed, no lights on there. We're just creeping along through the
backroads of Montana in the pouring rain. "Land-O-Lakes" is closed.
These roads are just drenched! There is, I bet, a couple of inches of water on
the road here, we'll just poke right through. We can't see shit. Someone left
the window open and the Atlas is soaked. I just turned on the defrost to
improve visibility, I'm very nervous and cannot relax.
It's extremely dark out there and you can just see these
huge shadows of mountains and you're going down for awhile, then you're going
up for awhile; there's a curve and there's just constant readjustment of the
wheel and the speed. It's never right...just tension, tension, tension. If we
just had windshield wipers, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. There is reason
to be nervous, I mean, who wants to crash and burn?
3:59 am: Things are looking better now. They're not great,
they're not ideal by any means; but the rain has stopped pouring down. Oh! A
blue sign! Now, the toilets and gas! Beautiful. The site of the Little Big Horn
battle is a mile from here, too bad we can't stop. It's four in the morning,
dark and wet and there's no reason at all to stop. This is really cool, the way
this has worked out. The Little Bighorn Casino! Let's drop a quarter! Is this
place open? There's a "Sinclair" station, the same place that fixed
our tire in South Dakota. My first impression of Montana was, "Hell On
Earth", but it's an alright place now. I'm sure that, in the daylight, the
scenery would be gorgeous.
4:15 am: The bathroom in this place is shitty and inside it's
not much better; but I found out, by studying stuff in there, that we're on a
reservation. There's a poster up in there to re-elect Sheriff Medicine Horse
and there are notices that a certain Council Member is discriminating against
Crow Indians. When I went in the bathroom, the trashcan was sitting up on the
toilet seat and it was eerie. It was just a scary place, but I'm glad we found
anywhere and that the rain stopped and the fog lifted.
Here's the deal with the windshield wipers - the left one
should be okay, the right one comes off.
There was a 300 pound Indian in there with tattoos. We
missed the way to the casino. We missed the way to our Interstate too.
I'm kinda likin' this. Me and Montana. Yeah! Laura's
cleaning Jonnie's ears with a Q-Tip while he drives, thanks Laura. All of us
have pretty clean ears.
It's early morning and Montana's turning out to not be the
Hell that we'd supposed. We're watching the sunrise and Todd's relaying a
dream.
Todd's Dream
...At the house, they had cattle and, while we were there,
one of the bulls went mad and we were all on acid and didn't know what to do.
It was a town...it might have been Billings actually. The van was parked and I
was gaging the strength of the door and I thought, "Well, we've got about
ten whacks, then that bull's through".
So we thought maybe we'd go to the barn, but the barn doors
were just thin old wood. Then it was fighting two other cows and winning!! They
were on top of it and it was just goring them, like, picking them up in the air
and then people thought, "Well, we've gotta help those other cows 'cause
this is a mad bull!
So it was, like, four humans and two cows against one mad
bull and they were fighting and wrestling it and finally everybody had a limb
and everybody got these ropes and tied it up and I'm just, like, watchin' it.
They tied up the mad bull and everybody pulled the ropes
tight and carried it. It's legs were all spread out and it couldn't move. It
got really elaborate on the ropes and knots...all different colors of ropes and
people in a procession carrying the bull and these guys were carrying hot-air
balloons. Behind them, a bunch of people had the bull and I was helping them
carry it. I asked what they did with it and they shot it and said,"Someone
will be eating that bull".
Then we were going home and Laura was driving the parents'
van. Somehow we got into an argument then turned off the road and there was a
cliff and she goes, "Fuck it, let's just take the cliff down", and drives
off the cliff. We made one jump and were okay, then we did something else and
got all fucked-up. Fucked that van up bad.
While Todd's remembering the rest of it, we'll watch the sun
rise in Columbus, Montana. Mountains all over the place.
I remember that the house we lived in...There were all these
fucking people with goatees living there. A bunch of people and I could hardly
tell them apart. And there was a Jamaican. Dad was there and we were getting
ready to go somewhere and the Jamaican and everybody were smoking a hooter on
the couch. We were going to an A.A. function and they were smoking this hooter
on the couch and we took the car to run an errand, their Escort.
On the way back, there were these people having a protest
about something, I don't even know what it was, but they were hanging in the
road a little bit, like sitting down, waiting. I said,"Fuck it, they're in
my lane". I just drove over them, like, their legs. One guy, I drove over
his legs and I looked at him and he just took a knife and got my tires. They
had cars parked around, so I bumped up against 'em. Boom! Like, "You
fuckers get out of here".
So after we got them, I looked and we had four flat tires
and we were, like, "Fuck it". So we just drove home on the rims.
We got back and Dad's real pissed because we smashed up the
van driving over a cliff and then we took the car and came back with four flat
tires and I knew he'd be pissed. In the dream, he had a white beard and I told
him, "Well, we drove it home on the rims 'cause it was only a mile",
and he goes, "oh, FUCK!!!"; just like he does.
There's more, but I don't know...a couple of fragments. That
dream catcher's goin' to town. A long vivid dream and I was totally into it,
like it was real.
Back to Reality:
I had a dream too. Mine wasn't that interesting though. It
just had to do with a lot of pot smoking and playing video games.
I'm still on top of the van. I just watched the sun come up.
Never is the sunrise more majestic than when you're surrounded by mountains.
We're even in an urban area and it's still exotic. The fog's just rolling in.
We're watching it roll in. Beautiful here. It's gonna be a day of mass travel
today. That fog's comin' right at us. If we get lost, it may be for days. The
fog is currently surrounding us. You can see it almost right up to the van.
It's a very thick fog and can even be clearly seen at close range. Far out in
the distance, the mountains that we did see are now completely covered and we
can't see a damn thing. The sun is, like, pale egg color. It's covered now! A
few minutes ago, it hurt your eyes to look at it, now you can stare right at it
and it's like the moon or something. It's hard to see it at all.
The fog is blotting out the sun. Before our eyes, the sun's
drying up! OH! It's gone! Oh. It's back. Oh no. It's gone. We just watched the
sun disappear. I've never seen that happen, the moisture from the fog just put
out the sun. We just watched the sun get snuffed. Even if the sun is dissolved,
you can still see those billboards over there. There's not a damn thing over
there but fog. We might plunge off a mountain to a fiery death and I hope this
log survives.
The sun is back!! The sun can not be extinguished, it rose
from its own ashes like the Phoenix. It's white. It's not nearly the
magnificent glory that it once was. It'll blast this fog away. You can't keep
the sun down. And then it's gonna burn those billboards and the world's gonna
go down in fire. It's gonna be the fucking Badlands everywhere. I hope my body
is eaten by vultures and shit across this great country. I hope my bones are
blown away onto Amber Lynn's doorstep and she comes out and licks them.
Do I wanna deal with this shit so early? Yeah, no fog's
gonna get me down. Blow that fog down the mountain, Sun. Blow that fog down
South. Now you can see the mountains again. The Sun is just burning that shit
away. For us! We're goin' North! We're gonna stop for coffee somewhere. Laura,
would you roll down your window? These socks are going out the window. These
socks aren't worth saving at all, let the fog swallow those bastards. There
they go, Goodbye! Be gone, long ones. Fog's up, I got the suitcase out from the
bottom of the van, got some clean bright socks on and I feel good about it.
Day 5, 9:35 am: We just had a long stop in a truck stop and we
wrote a shitload of postcards, so that's out of the way. Throw me those smokes.
It was a great little truck stop, hot water in the bathroom. truck stop literature...like,
bathroom stall writings...is the same across the country. I noticed no
difference between the messages here and the Columbia City truck stop. It must
be the same people driving around and they hit every truck stop and write the
same shit. Or just the same kinds of personalities that write on walls tend to
write the same type of stuff. In Wall there was...some name..."sucks
dick". The name was really Western and masculine, but I don't remember
what it was. Like, "Big Bill Sucks Dick".
The waitress in there was really friendly, she mailed our
postcards for us, she was a cutie. Really cute, really nice. If I wasn't
writing postcards, I'd have been goosing her, chasing her around the table. She
was a dumpling and we're leaving her behind for the road. Look at those
mountains! Like we ever had her to leave behind! But we're not hanging around
gawking at her. There's a water slide here, looks fun. We're gonna see some
unusual things today. We've been driving all night, Jonnie hasn't slept yet.
I'm gonna finish my smoke, Mel's gonna finish his smoke, Todd's gonna finish
his smoke, Laura's gonna finish her smoke; and we're just gonna floor it.
We just saw a sign that said we are looking a Aberaska
Mountain Range and it is gorgeous. We're looking for mountain goats. We may
have lost Jonnie, he's lying down and that may be his downfall. Dead skunk in
the middle of the road. That's a roadkill update.
11:11 am: All "ones" on the clock! We're here at
the "Bison Room Casino and Restaurant" where Laura has found that the
van has radiator leakage. A fellow traveler from Wisconsin, Chris, is helping
us out.
"I left Wisconsin yesterday at seven in the morning and
drove straight here
"Wow, that's pretty hard-core
"Yep, pretty hard-core. A six-pack of beer later and I
was here
"We left Indiana five days ago
"Oh my God, you guys aren't making very good
time
"Well, we fucked around in the Badlands."
"Oh...You went South?"
"Yeah. Then up North. We wanted to see Devil's
Tower
 |
| Thanks, Chris. |
"I was driving and all of a sudden, something came in
my window. I knew it was a bug, but I didn't know what it was called. All of a
sudden, something was biting me and it was a god-damned bumble bee. A hornet
actually. It hurt and it bit me two or three times."
I never expected this much research material for my analysis
- the bathroom stall thing. In the stall in this Conoco, not "Muff
Diver", but somebody wrote, "Talkin' Shit About JB Hunt", they
talk shit about that all the time in the Columbia City truckstop and it must be
the same guys. I wish I was getting a grant for this.
There is no progress. Van Log, I'm a dog. We've drained all
the chemical shit from the radiator and Chris is a good guy, a Road Man. Road
people help each other and it's a great society to be a part of. There's a NAPA
right over that overpass.
12:15 pm: We're in the NAPA parking lot, mission to get
teflon tape was successful, Laura's firing up the stove and we were just
strafed by a biplane. Here's the trickle of our antifreeze - it's a green
potion and it's filling up three of our pans; our biggest pan, our second
biggest pan and the skillet. We're gonna deal with this problem. Teflon tape.
We're gonna deal with it right.
Everything is going wrong! Maybe Montana is the hell that I
thought it was when I pulled in. Do you know what it was? I said that bad thing
about the Crow Indians all being in the casino when we pulled in on the
reservation. We have the Crow Indian Curse! Said something about them all being
at the casino, now we're broken down here at this big "Bison Room
Casino" thing. They said, "You're at the casino now, buddy. You're
gonna be at the casino for a long time and you're gonna be ordering food there
too". Our stove's broken.
You had better be doing some penance, man.
How do you do it? How do you make good?
I'll think of something.
We thought we wouldn't need goop for the radiator. I bought
some wrenches and it turns out that we do, in fact, need goop. I bought these
wrenches at NAPA, so I have all these wrenches now.
Mel was injured! He jumped over a ditch...a Raging Creek. It
was only 3 and a half feet wide, but it was raging, swirling eddies and
everything. Jumped over it, landed in soft dirt. At first it hurt, but then the
pain subsided and it just felt weird. If I turned it one way, it was a sharp
pain; but if I turned it another way, it felt great. I mean, it felt better
than normal. I was kind of afraid to take my boot off, but I did and I've found
out that it is swollen.
Furthermore, the stove won't work, there's no pressure in
the tank and we've tried everything.
1:00 pm: I was in meditation trying to heal my ankle, trying
to call upon the Godfathers and the Bear Spirit and somehow...Jonnie or Laura -
I think it was Jonnie, since he's the only one that nothing bad has happened to
yet - dumped, or spilled a whole can of Coleman Fuel and it went up in a pillar
of flame. It was leaping up the side of the NAPA store.
 |
| Our cooking pans, full of antifreeze. |
 |
| Todd inspects the radiator. |
 |
| Stove difficulties. |
 |
| Explosion next to the NAPA store. |
Todd went in and got one of the NAPA guys with a fire
extinguisher and it's out; but,, holy shit, we've got to do something. We have
to form a circle and bond and try to get rid of this bad karma. I mean, shit is
seriously - Seriously - going wrong. This is just too much bad shit happening
at one time; too much to be normal, this is unnatural. We've offended some
serious powers.
Have you ever felt, just really unwelcome? That's how we
feel here in Bozeman. We were trying to cement the thing on the stove and we've
been burning our debris, so we burnt a paper towel and couldn't get it to
light. In my family, we pour a little fluid on it, so that's what I did. I
looked down at my hand - I was holding the can - and there was flame going
around on top. I threw it down and it burst into flame. Me and Laura looked at
each other. Todd got in the van and coasted over the skillet full of
antifreeze. Bent that skillet out of shape, like a taco. I was sure that the
black smoke was going to stain NAPA's siding and we'd have to buy another one.
Todd ran in and informed them and they sprayed it with a fire extinguisher.
They said, "What were you doing so close to the building?" Everybody's worst fear, burning the most explosive thing that you can buy.
OK Crow, this is an eternal apology to the Crow Indian.
We're unwelcome in this town and this is penance out the ass. Laura's got a big
bug bite on her ass. I laughed so hard, I peed my pants. I have a real problem
with that sometimes. We've got to get out of here. I'm gonna change my camera
film, the last picture was that fire.
Our first cookware casualty - a skillet bent like a taco.
Coasted right over it, I just thought, "I'm getting out of here".
We're talking about appeasing the Gods now, but it's hard to
be sincere. This is just too fun, it's exciting and I can't give a damn as long
as the van's running. I don't want to wish a dead van on us. Lets just say
we're even with the Gods. We've had a lot of good times and, just now, we've
had a lot of bad times. We just don't want anything worse to happen. The van
could've blown up and I would have been right here, dead. But it didn't happen
so we're not going to play with fire anymore. When you play with fire, you pee
the bed. I know you've heard that one before, Laura. I don't pee the bed, I pee
my pants.
I turned around and there was a burning can of Coleman Fuel
- 'WHOOSH!'.
I just heard, 'Oh Shit!'"
I just looked down at the can and thought, 'that really
caught'.
I just fell down on the ground and pissed and laughed.
Right when I let go of the can, I wished I hadn't thrown it
at the building. I was thinking, you know...away from the van. I'd rather burn
NAPA down than the van. We'd just haul balls out of here, but we don't have any
antifreeze in the radiator. We'd make it as far as we could and then we'd be
fucked.
Things have taken a turn for the worse, but that's all over
now. We're on a new leg and Jonnie's sweeping out the van.
I'm trying to get rid of that old curse. It's kind of like a
cleansing. Getting rid of the curse that we drug here from our earlier days.
Hellfire.
1:47 pm: This is our goop inventory: Shoe Goo, gasket goop,
hair gel, peanut butter, jelly and all kinds of lotions. "Aloe Vera Mosquito".
Lotion is a sub-species of goop. It's smooth. It's a soft goop, a slick goop.
Goop doesn't go away when you rub it. If you rub lotion long enough, it goes
away. I found some more goop - this tar shit.
2:29 pm: We've pretty much decided that all of that bad luck
in Bozeman was because of Bozeman and not us. We're good people, it's just that
Bozeman is a fucked-up place to be and we're getting out of here. When Todd and
Mel drove through here a couple of years ago, a bunch of bad stuff happened then
too. If we'd done nothing to the radiator, it probably would have stopped
leaking once we left town. That guy, Chris, told us that the guy from Starsky
and Hutch is now a lounge lizard and he's performing at the "Big Sky
Resort", too bad we missed it.
We're out of Bozeman and it's raining. All the bad luck is
gonna go away. No more bad luck after today. I took a short nap and have just examined my ankle and the
swelling has gone down just a smidgin.
4:56 pm: We stopped in Drummond to get some gas. We stopped
at Exxon, but they didn't have big cups of coffee or radiator sealant; so we
went to the Sinclair, which has always done us right. I asked the lady how much
she'd charge me for a 32oz. pop cup filled with coffee and she smiled and said,
"Nothing". She gave it to me for free. I thought that was really
nice.
Hopefully we have fucked with the radiator for the final
time. We forgot to check the oil, but we'll do that next stop. It's not
accurate unless the engine's cool anyway and we don't stop.
My generously-given cup of coffee that I put in the soda cup
has wax floating on top of it. By taking a paper towel and dipping it just on
top of my coffee, I have removed 90 percent of the wax. My ankle is still
swollen and I'm getting some yellowish discoloration. It's really not that bad,
all that a doctor will do is bill you for giving out a pair of crutches and
saying, "Take it easy". It's gonna definitely bruise. We have
Missoula in the next three exits.
6:03 pm: We just picked up a couple of guys hitchhiking,
Digger and Chuck, and they're gonna get some beer. You couldn't ask for
anything better, unless they'd want to smoke a bowl and they look like they do.
We're gonna get an interview. The radiator is still leaking, maybe we should go to a
mechanic. Maybe we should just go get some advice, that's free. We could've
gone into NAPA for advice if we hadn't almost burned their building down.
"I'm Digger and I'm on my way to Washington."
"I'm Chuck and I'm traveling with this bum to
Washington and I'm glad to be with you guys and thanks for the ride
"Thanks for the beer. Are you guys from Montana?"
"Yep. Born and raised. Unfortunately
"So, what's so bad about Montana?"
"Nothing. I don't feel there is anyway. When you've
been there for 20 years, it kind of gets old
"Bozeman. Is that just, like, the Bad Luck Town, or
what?"
[No Answer]
I'm on my third beer and having a good time. These guys are
great. A merry ride through the mountains of Montana. First roadkill of the day
was a skunk and there was a big hole in its chest and you could see through it.
It looked like a brain inside its chest, but of course it wasn't. It was on the
edge of a cliff, bad place to die.
7:45 pm: It finally happened, the radiator spit up all over
me. I saw it coming and quickly closed my eyes. Sprayed my face, I feel some
burns, but they won't be bad. It's like after you touch a hot pan or something.
But as soon as it happened, I was like, "Okay, is this as bad as I've
heard"? The guy in the gas station was very friendly and Jonnie's at the
wheel.
Will our luck get any better?
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