Day 31 - 11/16/2007 - I was totin' my pack along the dusty Winnemucca road...

After our respective delightful evenings in San Francisco, we slogged through morning traffic to reunite our heroes in the depths of Oakland, and embark on a westward 12 hour trek through the desert.

Nevada crawled by. Paris called from Salt Lake City to ask our ETA and where we were. I told her we were next to some rocks, and some brown hills, and a little brown bush. She said she knew the spot. The landscape between the Bay area and Brigham Young’s promised land is indeed barren and brown. Almost Martian. Although they’re totally unlike the dramatic snowcapped peaks from up north, I also love these understated dusty hills, whispering deep truths along their curves to the horizon. Yep, the land speaks as I begin to lose my mind in the desert from holding in my pee for so long, We’re a bunch of rocks and shit. That’s just sorter how things are ‘round here. With Johnny Cash’s voice rumbling in the car as we passed through Winnemucca, life on the road seems isolated, simple.

We made a quick food stop in Lovelock, Nevada, where Brad wandered off as per usual, but returned in time for arcade games and greasy pizza.

At about 9pm we pulled into Paris’ street in Salt Lake City. Paris was my effervescent housemate back in Providence. It was a happy reunion.

Eager to show us that Salt Lake City wasn’t purely a Mormon bastion of squeaky clean puritanical values, Paris poured us generous gin and tonics as we got ready to go out, chatting with her roommates and feasting on leftover pulled pork.

The first bar we visited was crammed full of hardcore skier/snowboarder types, or at least people posing as such. Two hours later, the second bar we visited promised a hott dance floor, something we were all fully prepared for at that point. The bouncer, nametag: “Pepe,” denied our entrance, however, stating with a smirk that they didn’t let anyone in past 1. It was 12:57. Along with a few other disappointed would-be-dancers, we started heckling the guy. His name quickly evolved into “Peepee.” After being asked why he would cause us such frustration and anguish when he could easily just let us in and make a bunch of people really happy, he rocked on his heels like a jerk and responded triumphantly, “Because I can.”

Now, I don’t care how drunk one may be on some pitiful bouncer power, I hope Peepee has explosive diarrhea for the rest of his life.

After depositing my dinner in various potted plants around downtown Salt Lake City, we finally made it home, where we played with Paris’ dog, pigged out in the kitchen, and fell asleep dreaming of mountains and Mormons…

Day 30 - 11/15/07 - California Here We Come

When we got up the next day, we were sad to see that we were still in the sullen Oregon RV park, for which we had to pay $12. Dozens of fake campers surrounded us, and after our billionth round of tuna sandwiches on the trip, we jumped back on route 5 south and headed…south.

This was a pretty spectacular drive. We were surrounded by the most lush, saturated colors of forests as we left Alaska and its temperatures far behind. The sun was blazing in the sky, and the thermometer slowly crept into the 60’s. (Not the decade. That would have made for a bizarre sci-fi twist if our thermometer had time-traveled out of the car.) With myself at the wheel, we drove through warm forests filled with tall, old evergreen trees whose bark was a rich rusty scarlet color. As we passed from the towering woodlands of southern Oregon and into California, the landscape changed to a strange hilly place with steep slopes, short bushes and yellow grass. The sky was raging its blue violently into our eyes and the heat of that big crazy star of ours was absolutely intoxicating us, which would have made me, in a literary sense, DWI. We kept rolling through the gorgeous gentle landscape, making only one rest stop to use the bathroom and to bask in the hot sunlight. Only a few days ago in Fairbanks, the temperature was -3 degrees, and now it was 71. We drove past Mt. Shasta, a big snowcapped mountain that seems wildly out of place, and I believe the namesake for that generic soda.

We stopped at a gas station to get some doughnuts and we encountered the cheeriest gas station attendant on earth. He was this young middle eastern guy with a white turban who squealed and laughed unintelligibly at literally every form of communication. I think he freaked out the middle aged lady in front of us, but we fully appreciated his humor, and the awkward sexual innuendos/jokes he kept unloading on that lady and her shriveled, disapproving soul. We scrounged enough change up to get some Shasta soda and doughnuts. We each had four out of the box of 12, and I ate all of mine immediately and then felt sick for a while. Darren took over as we neared San Francisco, so that I wouldn’t have to drive in a city, repeating my Montreal debacle. We were all splitting up once we got there, so we figured out where we were going, and the trip split into a simultaneous Canterbury Tales format for the night.

I was dropped off unceremoniously in Oakland before the rest of the gang headed into Frisco. I was staying with my childhood friends from home who had moved to Oakland, Kathleen and Harris. I met Kathleen at their place and we reminisced and just sat while she made an unbelievable dinner, which kicked the ass of everything I’d eaten on the trip so far. When Harris got home from work, we all ate and just sort of reunited in the apartment. I hadn’t seen them since before I went to Scotland, which was over a year ago. After touring their place, Kathleen’s boyfriend whose name was Brad came over, which was weird because that was the first person I’d ever met who had the same name as me. The rest of the night was confusing because of that, but not confusing in a bad way. We went out to get really expensive California ice cream, which was awesome. I got peanut butter and chocolate. It was like 60 degrees out and they were all complaining that it was a little bit cold, to which I erupted about Alaska and its weather and “what’s really cold” and so on.

The next morning, I got up and had an amazing breakfast from Kathleen, and got ready to be picked up by the car once again to continue on to Salt Lake City. Harris and Kathleen both made themselves late for work to dress up in aprons and pretend they were my parents seeing me off at the school bus. I met up with the car and they gave me a banana and waved me off with random kitchen appliances, and with that we were on our way east to Utah.

-Posted by Brad

Day 29 - 11/14/07 - See ya Seattle

Today we avoided further passive aggressive pouting by Gordon by *actually* getting our asses in gear before noon, then *actually* went to the music/sci-fi museum as discussed, and they were *actually* open.

Gordon and Darren spent most of their time exploring the music section of the museum – The Seattle Aurally Magnificent Music Hall of Wonders, featuring guitar sculptures, interactive exhibits, and famous musical memorabilia.

Meanwhile, Brad and I wandered the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, replete with all the shit you would expect: Patrick Stewart’s Borg headgear, Death Star models and rubber alienware, oh my. The exhibits did go through a pretty broad history of science fiction writing as the story of genre pioneered in pulp, but now surely recognized as a legitimate literary source of ideas concerning humanity -- the impact of developing technologies and social movements, and our role in the universe. I started furiously scribbling down the names of authors and books that sounded interesting, happily reading blurbs about Philip K Dick and Ray Bradbury… until the next horde of little boys would rumble by, smearing grubby fingers on display glass and screaming at the ray guns on display, screaming at each other, screaming at the exciting world of science fiction in general, before being consumed by ADHD and sprinting to the next room.

After Thai lunch, we waved goodbye to the Space Needle and bolted for California. The rest of Washington and the whole of Oregon flew by, blurry and unnoticed. This far “south,” we were delighted by the warm weather that allowed for car doors to be left leisurely open during a potty stop, and by the sun, who greeted us high in the sky, where that motherfucker’s supposed to be.

Camping tonight was in an RV park in southern Oregon. A bit of a letdown in scenery after so much Alaskan beauty, but goddamn it was nice to sleep without socks on.