BMFRTE Day 11: Hope, and New Orleans

Monday, 8/27: somewhere in rural Oklahoma:

We head out, east through Oklahoma and into southeastern Arkansas. This is the fourth day of our trip from NYC to CA that has us traveling either north, east, or both. But whatever- this is the BMFRTE. This is how we roll.

Upon careful study of the atlas over our usual greasy-spoon diner breakfast, we realize that our trip diagonally across Arkansas to Memphis will take us right through Hope, where the Bill Clinton Presidential Library is. It's a race against time to see if we can make it to Graceland before it closes, especially since we were not good about getting up this morning, and stopping somewhere seriously imperils that goal, but we both figure we're more likely to be in Memphis someday than Hope, so we opt to stop for Hope.


I got nuthin' for this one. I mean, what is there really to say about Arkansas? Like Texas, but without all the charm?




We get to the library at about 2pm, and figure we can spend maybe half an hour before we have to high-tail it out of there. The Clinton library seems very, well, Clinton-like: very grand, very interesting, a little over the top...



The Clinton Library. [Insert own intern joke here]








Although we initially intend to spend only half an hour, we wind up getting sucked in [Insert own intern joke here] and spend over an hour. Interesting bits include an actual presidential limo, a replica of the Oval Office, a short film narrated by President Clinton, and a replica of the Cabinet room, where you can sit in the President's chair.


I have a dream- that someday even short brown men with bad hair can be President...






We had a good time, but as much as we enjoyed ourselves at the Clinton Library, we were in and out in under an hour [Insert own intern joke here]. And though we couldn't stay as long as we would have liked, it's a spot the two of us will remember forever. [Insert own intern joke here]

We jump back in the car and head out to Memphis. We're not sure what time Graceland closes, so we call Keiko and use the magic of the internet to discover that Graceland closes at 5. That's two hours from now, and we're over 200 miles away. Even with our driving, we're not going to make it, and I don't intend to show up at Graceland half an hour after closing on 2 consecutive tries.

The last time I tried to see Graceland, I was on a road trip with Jeffrey, and we showed up at what must have been 530, and were forced to observe Graceland from outside the gate. Fortunately, there was plenty of Elvis/Graceland memorabilia at the shop across the street, and we had a nice dinner on Beale street, so it was still a good night. And I did once actually get to see Graceland, on a road trip with Zhian, which was a 5000 mile trip from LA to StL immediately after graduating from Pomona. My dad gave me as a graduation gift a big coffee can he had been dumping change into for ten years. The can had over $400 in change, and that's what I lived off of for 2 weeks on the road trip. Gas station attendants and waitresses hated me.

Anyway, with Graceland joining Acadia, Bryce, and Canyonlands on the cutting room floor of the BMFRTE, we arced southeast and headed for Mississippi, to catch I-55 down toward New Orleans...

Mississippi- it's like coming home. If home is an oppressively hot, humid land characterized by a legacy of widespread poverty and entrenched racism.


Since we're on the way to New Orleans, I pop in today's road trip CD- 8/27/07: A Heckuva Mix

1) What You Gonna Do - Buckwheat Zydeco
2) Graceland - Paul Simon
3) Walking in Memphis - Mark Cohen
4) Tennessee - Arrested Development
5) Movin' to Virginia - Split Lip Rayfield
6) Carolina in My Mind - James Taylor
7) Midnight Train to Georgia -
8) Georgia on My Mind - Ray Charles
9) Woke Up This Morning - Alabama 3
10) Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
11) Welcome to Paradise - Front 242
12) Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters
13) House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
14) Waiting for the Miracle - Leonard Cohen
15) History Repeating - The Propellerheads
16) Your Racist Friend - They Might Be Giants
17) Red Right Hand - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
18) Send in the Clowns - Judy Collins

We drive the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening, stopping only once, in a little roadside town, to get gas and food. The food is in a lean-to attached to the gas station. It's definitely one of the sketchiest places I've eaten in a long, long time (and that's saying something), but the food is surprisingly good. The place is staffed by a gigantic black woman, and we immediately decide that we'd better be good to Mama, or Mama'll beat us to within an inch of our lives. She serves us up some fried chicken that was both extremely greasy, and extremely good, as were the mashed potatoes, and the corn nuggets (deep fried corn- here in the Deep South, there ain't nuthin' that kain't be deep fried).

We get back on the road, and roll into New Orleans around 10pm. We head straight to the French Quarter, and drive around looking for a hotel. We finally find the Hotel Monteleone, which turns out to be a really sweet hotel, but perhaps due to a combination of post-Katrina blues plus a Monday night in a quiet time of the year, is super cheap. It's also only a block from Bourbon St., which could be convenient later if we're going to be stumbling home drunk.


The French Quarter from the hotel room window.







This from Ed: "We check in, change, and head out to Bourbon St. This place is obviously debauchery central, even on a Monday night. Cool bars... live music... I love Bourbon St and the French Quarter immediately.

We walk up and down the entire street, and the only disappointing thing is that we can't find food (we're both starving). So we walk over a couple blocks to a 24-hr food place where we are immediately welcomed by the friendliest -and pretty odd- waitress. She's got a southern accent that both Gus and I think is fake, she's about 6'3", she's dressed like a midwest farmer's daughter with the short shorts and cowboy boots, she's got painted eyebrows, and she's super friendly and talkative... oh, and she calls everyone 'honey'.

Over the course of the meal, she has some choice phrases: her wrist is bandaged up, and when Gus asks what happened she replies that 'a boy's face ran into my hand.' Later, while telling us about some good local stripclubs, she tells us how one of her friends 'dropped $1000 on lapdances and didn't even bust a nut.' This is good stuff."

Yeah, although we'll never know for sure, and, speaking for both of us, we don't ever want to know for sure, I'm pretty sure we were talking to Mangelina, if you know what I mean. We left a nice tip and got the hell out there, because we were already getting the story about how she had just moved back there and was living in a crappy situation and didn't even have a bed yet. Uh, yeah, whew, look at the time...

So we head back to Bourbon St., and after stopping a bit to watch some filming taking place on the streetcorner of what was either a very low-budget porn movie or yet another installment of Girls Gone Wild, we started aggressively bar-hopping. There was good music, and drinks were two-for-one everywhere, and after a while we started adopting a policy of hanging out until the place we were in closed and kicked us out.

Sometime after 3 a.m., we found ourselves in a bar that was still going strong, and filled with drunk trashy girls making spectacles of themselves on the dance floor. Between that entertainment and just grooving out off toward the side of the dance floor, I was happy. Yep, happy. Just minding my own business. At one point, I turn to the side to see what's going on with Ed, and I see him talking to one of the waitresses, and pointing my way. I look away quickly, hoping that Ed's not trying to cause some kind of trouble.

Two seconds later, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to look, and there is the waitress standing right in front of me. I have just enough time to register that it's her before she puts her hand on my forehead, shoves me down to my knees, takes 2 test tubes of liquor from this rack she's been carrying around all night, more or less deep throats the test tubes from the bottom, so that only a fraction of the tops are protruding from her mouth, and then mimes french kissing me, which has the effect of dumping 2 test tubes full of liquor down my throat.

Now, she would not have been able to get away with this normally, but having the element of surprise, as well as the additional advantage of being sober, versus my having spent the last 4 hours drinking with Ed (which has historically led to a lot of pain and suffering on my part), she was able to bushwhack me. It all happened with blinding speed- I had only enough time to think "OMG, am I being assaulted right now? Why couldn't I be assaulted by a cute waitress?" and then it was over. Of course, the next thing that happened was my trying to figure out what had just been put down my throat, and in a moment I realized what it was- Jagermeister. BLECH! I can do vodka shots all night long and been fine, but all I need to do is sniff Jager and I want to puke. I look over at Ed, and he is doubled over in laughter, slapping his knee. He is very pleased with himself. I want to kill him, but I'm afraid any sudden moves may make me vomit.

This from Ed: "One of the highlights of the evening, at least for me, was when one of those girls whose job is to sell shots out of test tubes, comes up to me at about 3 a.m. and says 'Help me out. If I get rid of these last few shots, I can get out of here.' So I ask her what's in the test tubes and she says 'Jager.' Knowing how fond Gus is of Jager, I immediately point at him and say 'My friend would love a shot.' Without hesitation this girl walks over to Gus, who can't hear any of this over the music, puts two test tubes in her own mouth, grabs Gus's head, and pours the shots from her mouth into his. It was hilarious; I think he almost threw up right back into her mouth. Of course, while I'm cracking up, she comes over and does the same to me, so I end up buying 4 shots... worth every penny. So the night was good- we closed down Bourbon Street."

Yeah, that's pretty fucking hilarious.

Vengeance shall be mine...

BMFRTE Day 10: Dallas

Sun 8/26, 7 a.m., outskirts of Salt Lake City:

It is said that Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So, after the fiasco getting to the airport in St. Louis, Ed and I have decided to be Responsible Adults- we have set up a plan that will get us to the airport a full hour before our flight is scheduled to take off. We are eager to feel the glorious feeling of walking slowly through the airport, not caring if they want to open our bags at security, and arriving at the gate so early that the boredom eventually builds up to such a maddening level that we finally break down, and, out of sheer desperation, buy Dean Koontz books. We are looking forward to this.

730 a.m.: the plan is working perfectly. We are like Special Ops soldiers, ruthlessly executing the mission plan. We are bathed, packed, and in the car. We are on the correct freeway, heading in the correct direction. All we have to do now is watch for the airport signs.

Since we've still got a bit of a drive (we're on the southernmost outskirts of Salt Lake City), I pop in today's road trip mix. Called 'Wistfulness', it continues the theme of the past few days, of reflection and self-examination, today with a 'path not taken' flavor. It's funny how much difference a year can make- one year ago today I was in LA, serving as a groomsman in JOC's wedding, certain I would be in NYC for another few years, and wondering if I'd ever get back to CA. And now I'm moving to CA to build a business. Oh, and the other groomsman at JOC's wedding: Grossman, whom we'll be seeing tonight in Dallas.

8/26/07: Wistfulness

1) The Fall Guy - Original TV Theme
2) Different Drum - Linda Ronstadt
3) I'm Like a Bird - Nelly Furtado
4) What Have I Done to Deserve This? - The Pet Shop Boys
5) How to Save a Life - The Fray
6) California Dream - Dream Warriors
7) Lost Cause - Beck
8) The Trapeze Swinger - Iron & Wine
9) 1972 - Josh Rouse
10) Eye of the Hurricane - David Wilcox
11) Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
12) Losing My Way - Justin Timberlake
13) The Reason - Hoobastank
14) Trenches - Caitlin Canty
15) Mercury - Counting Crows
16) Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
17) The Last Farewell - Roger Whitaker
18) Aubrey - Bread
19) That Day (Cinema Paradiso) - Karyn Allison

815 a.m.: The signs seem to be indicating that we're on our way to Provo, which is north of Salt Lake. In fact, the downtown is behind us. I ask Ed to consult the atlas and verify the exit number we just passed is still before the airport.

It isn't.

In fact, we seem to have overshot it by a hefty margin. But we were watching the signs the whole way! I get off at the first available exit, and commence doubling back. This time Ed and I are both watching exit numbers, using the atlas as a guide. We get off at the exit that the map seems to indicate will lead us to the airport. We still haven't seen a SINGLE sign for the airport on the highway.

[Flashback:

Salt Lake City airport has always been something of an unexpected headache for me to get to. The summer after sophomore year in college, I attended a ballroom dance camp at BYU, in Provo, Utah. Now, for all you readers out there who are sniggering right now, especially the male ones, especially MK, at the thought of attending a dance camp, let me just say that competitive ballroom dancing requires an incredible level of fitness, and in the case of the Latin dances, an incredibly minuscule amount of clothing. There were hot women all over the place. It was like heaven- only run by Mormons, so you're not allowed to have any of what normal people would consider fun, and you have to be really happy all the time. Only the Jews have more complicated rules for how to live day-to-day than the Mormons do. But, as compensation, Jews are allowed to be miserable.

Anyway, I was in St. Louis for the summer, so I asked my dad, for my birthday, to buy my ticket to and from Salt Lake, which he did. It so happened that Laszlo had come out to St. Louis for a visit, and we were flying out at almost the same time, so my mom dropped us off at the airport in St. Louis together.

Now, I had never been to Salt Lake City before, so that morning when I looked at my ticket closely for the first time, to verify my departure time, and it said "St. Paul" on it, I just assumed that's what they called the airport in Salt Lake. Like we call ours Lambert St. Louis International Airport, maybe they call theirs St. Paul airport in Salt Lake. I mean, who knows what kooky things those Mormons do.

So when Laszlo and I walked up to the ticket counter to check in, I had the following exchange with the ticket agent:

Agent: "Hi. Where are you headed today?"
Me (handing ticket): "Salt Lake City."
Agent (frowning): "Your ticket says you're going to St. Paul."
Me: "Yeah. Uh, that's not what they call the airport in Salt Lake City, Utah?"
Agent: "No, that's what they call the airport in St. Paul, Minnesota."
Me: "Uh oh."

At this point, I'm thinking, WTF?!?! I mean, why the hell did my dad buy me a ticket to St. Paul? WHO GOES TO ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA????? Answer: NO ONE. I bet half the population of Minneapolis has never been to St. Paul. And it's not like "St. Paul" and "Salt Lake" sound that much alike. (Oh, you wanted to go to Columbia? I thought you said, Colombia!)

This being 1991, it was still 4 years before I would have my first credit card, and 12 years before I would have my first cell phone, so I was screwed. Fortunately, Laszlo was there and had a credit card, so he bought me a ticket right there at the counter, at whatever price they were asking, presumably somewhere between 2 and 3 million dollars. It was pre-9/11, so brown people like me could still buy a same-day ticket while looking nervous and stressed out, all without having to undergo a body cavity search and preemptive waterboarding.

In the end, thanks to Laszlo, I did manage to make a flight, and arrive safely into Salt Lake City airport. But not without a lot of stress. So I probably should have seen all this coming...]

The exit puts us on a road which seems to be circumnavigating the airport. But we can at least see the airport now, so we figure the road should get us in eventually. We continue to follow the road around the perimeter of the airport.

845 a.m.: The road has terminated at a checkpoint with an armed guard. He informs us that we cannot enter the airport complex from here; in fact, we must backtrack ALL THE WAY back to the highway, and then take a different exit.

846 a.m.: I am doing 95 mph on the surface streets back to the highway. Our flight takes off in 44 minutes.

900 a.m.: we have dropped off the rental car and are hightailing it for the terminal.

910 a.m.: we are in the line for security.

912 a.m.: they have stopped Ed and are searching his bag. Really, I should not be surprised by this at this point.

918 a.m.: We are at the gate. The last few people are still filing onto the plane, so although we're going to be last to board _again_, we won't be noticeably last, and there's still 12 minutes until takeoff, so Ed and I congratulate each other on improving our airport arrival performance over St. Louis.

Baby steps, people. It's all about baby steps.

922 a.m.: this just in! Two other people just got on the plane, so we're _not_ the last ones after all. This prompts an additional round of high-fiving and mutual congratulations.

We are scheduled to fly to Denver, and then catch a connecting flight into Dallas. The flight to Denver goes smoothly, but then the connecting flight to Dallas is delayed an hour. We had a pretty long layover as it was, and it's looking like we will be damned to another Dean Koontz hell, but then we are granted a reprieve, in the form of the UCLA women's volleyball team. You know how they put mirrors by elevators, so that you're distracted and don't notice how much time the elevator is taking? Placing a women's volleyball team at the adjacent gate in the airport accomplishes a similar effect.

Well, okay, it accomplishes a slightly different effect...

But we do finally get to Dallas, get our rental car, and head off to see Chris and Grossman. We have a good time chatting with them for a couple hours, before heading out to the Rangers game. Originally, they were scheduled to come with us, but in the intervening time Chris has developed a case of pregnancy that has rendered her unable to drink any beer, which for her is a key component of enjoying baseball. And Grossman, in an act of stunning empathy that I make a mental note to mock him for mercilessly at some point in the future when there aren't any women around, decides to stay home with his pregnant wife rather than come to the game with us.

[And that, friends, is why Grossman, who is the same age as I am, has a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, and a (presumably) beautiful baby girl on the way, while I will later tonight go downstairs to sleep alone on my air mattress (borrowed from Laura), that sits on box springs (donated by Laszlo). But not until I finish writing this post, on the glass tabletop (given to me by Cara), while sitting in the comfy leather chair (borrowed from JOC) wrapped in my nifty Geometric Blanket (knit by Chris), and also not until I eat my dinner on this dining table (that belongs to my landlord). And by "dinner", what I mean is, whatever I can concoct using the current contents of my refrigerator, which are, in no particular order, water, slowly curdling milk, margarine, 3 limes, a handful of shallots, bacon, raspberry jam, half a jar of maraschino cherries, and a coconut. Oh, and in an unexpected surprise, at the back of the bottom shelf a little to-go box with two pieces of beer-battered fried fish- from two weeks ago. But back to the story...]

It is, once again, a beautiful day for a ballgame, and the Rangers do win, though not before the Mariners score in the top of the ninth, to make it interesting...


The view from outside...













...and inside.










Our seats are once again awesome- we're right behind the first base dugout. That gives us some great views of:



Ichiro! He's so good. And they named a sushi restaurant after him, right around the corner from my old apt. in NYC.









Sammy Sosa! He hit career homer #605 tonight, 430 ft. into the left field stands.






It was an enjoyable game. Chris and Grossman offered to let us crash with them tonight, but I've got an Idea. This from Ed: "After the game, we head north to Oklahoma even though our next destination is New Orleans.


Rejected ideas for the state sign include: "Oklahoma- Your Trail of Tears Ends Here."





You see, Gus has agreed to go through Oklahoma, to Arkansas, and down through Mississippi because I haven't been to any of those states (nor have I been to Louisiana). The plan is to get to Graceland in Memphis tomorrow, and then drive hard to get to New Orleans by nightfall so we can go out. We stop in Oklahoma for the night."

Stirring the Pot: Chapter 1: Legalizing Prostitution

I got an email from JJM the other day, describing a PA proposal to tax the entrance fees to strip clubs, and use at least some of the proceeds to help fund programs for sexually abused kids. Obviously, any tax will be opposed by the people on whom it is levied, but the argument the opposition is using is interesting: that it's a violation of the strip clubs' 1st amendment free speech rights.

Now, I can't imagine that argument holding up in court; it's not as if anyone is being prevented from going into the strip club, and if a court were to allow the argument to stand, then everyone would be arguing that every tax they pay is some kind of infringement of their rights. But thinking about this particular issue inspired a new thread of blog posts, which I'll call "Stirring the Pot", in which I will throw out there my most controversial positions on issues, and see what (if anything) happens.

So, I'll kick off this thread of discussion with the topic of prostitution. Here's my position on prostitution: legalize it. Legalize it everywhere, and then tax and regulate the living crap out of it. I'm talking big government style taxation and regulation, the kind that makes movement conservatives wake up screaming at 4 a.m., nauseous and in a cold sweat. Off the top of my head, here are some examples of the regulations I would require:

- zoning: obviously, you don't want bordellos anywhere close to schools. I'm sure there are many other zoning issues to consider

- regular inspections of the facilities, at most monthly, by inspectors who would work in pairs, which would be regularly changed up, and who would rotate through areas, to minimize the probability of inspector misbehavior

- regular health checkups for all workers

- mandated levels of internal security to protect workers from any violence

- heavy taxation of bordello revenue, with the additional stipulation that tax revenues from bordellos can only go to fund programs that promote things like women's health. You don't want government to be in the position of funding its infrastructure budgets or law enforcement budgets out of bordello revenue, because then the incentive is for government to encourage bordello patronage.

- mandated training for any workers, including education on toll-free hotlines to report any employer non-compliance.

- strong privacy safeguards for both workers and patrons. Although prostitution is something that as a society we should try to minimize, attacking individuals isn't the way to do it; rather, a long-term shift in values is required.

That's what jumps to mind immediately, though I'm sure that an afternoon of pondering the issue more would generate a lot more.

But why, you ask. Why make it legal? Doesn't that do the opposite of minimizing prostitution?

In my mind, there are a number of reasons to do this. The most abstract argument, I think, is that if two adults wish to conduct a sex-for-money transaction, that does not in the abstract pose any obvious immediate harm to them or anyone else, and so in a free society they should be allowed to conduct that transaction. And, although this is a much more cynical position, it nevertheless remains true that a whole lot of human relationships are just a very small step away from that anyway. Further, sex-for-money is not even close to being the most socially detrimental kind of transaction that people conduct.

On a much more pragmatic level, no society in history, no matter how totalitarian, is known to have ever managed to eliminate prostitution. Prostitution exists, has existed, and will exist, until some day in the far future when we've either all given up bodies in order to merge our consciousnesses in cyberspace, or we've managed to instill a completely different social value set than the one we have. Either way, that world is a long way off from the world we live in, and in the world we live there is going to be prostitution, whether any individual one of us likes it or not. The only question is, will we control it or not?

Legalizing prostitution, I argue, is the most effective way of controlling it, and will yield many ancillary benefits. First, it will severely damage the black market for prostitution, which will greatly lower the number of women trafficked in this country. The trafficking of women in this world is a problem that doesn't get nearly enough attention. It will also lower the probability that a woman working as a prostitute suffers violence.

Second, it will allow us to make a sizable dent in the public health impact of prostitution. Since legal bordellos can have regular health inspections, it will reduce the spread of STD's. The third world in particular has suffered mightily from this aspect of prostitution, though it does affect us here in America as well.

Third, it will generate tax revenue to fund women's health initiatives. Again, transactions are going to happen whether we like it or not; we might as well tax them and put the money to a good use, which will at least partially offset the negative social impact of having prostitution at all.

Bob Herbert wrote a good editorial in the New York Times about the legal prostitution business in Nevada, in which he exposed a lot of crappy conditions and behavior, and then from that concluded that legalized prostitution was by its nature an assault on women. I understand and sympathize with his point, but ultimately disagree. The Nevada situation to me represents a total failure to regulate properly. I think the mindset out there is "pretty much anything goes", not "let's try to contain a problem we can't eliminate, and along the way try to limit the negative effects on people." Legalized prostitution of the kind I'm describing above has not yet been tried, at least in this country.

So there you have it. Obviously, this is going to be a tough position to have taken if I ever run for President, but then again, I wouldn't want to be President if it meant having to cave on tough issues. Not that it's going to come up- I don't have good enough hair.

BMFRTE Day 9: Angel's Landing & Capitol Reef NP

Sat 8/25, 730 a.m., Zion National Park:

Today's goal: Angel's Landing. Although it means scrapping Bryce National Park, Angel's Landing is my favorite hike, and I'm determined that we should do it before we go. I've been up 5 times already, with Tasha, Laszlo, Sarah, Nacole, and Jeffrey. It's always worth it. If you haven't been, you should go, before too many people fall and kill themselves (approx 1-2 people per year) and they either close it or neuter it.

This from Ed: "So we're up before 8 a.m., out, and we start the hike up Angel's Landing just before 9 a.m. This was a tough hike- 2.5 miles up extremely steep switchbacks climbing almost 2,000 ft. by the end. While the beginning and middle are very steep and stenuous, the last 1/2 mile is, well, treacherous. You're walking along this sliprock that is not just smooth but also slanted.... and you're on a cliff. If you slip and fall, you plummet a couple thousand feet to your death. They have these chains you can hold onto to help you out, but it's still pretty scary. And there is also a stretch that is flat but only a few feet wide with cliffs on either side of you; it's a great feeling to walk that. When we reach the top the views were indescribable. It's difficult to describe things of such physical beauty with words- you just have to go and see it to really understand."

The views are indescribable, and even pictures have a hard time capturing the grandness and sheer scale of the place. But here's a few pics anyway...

The view from our hotel












Looking back at where we've hiked from...















Standing on Angel's Landing. Sadly, no actual angels in sight...











...but at least there are a couple of handsome devils.












Time to head back down. The tree in this picture...











...is the tree on the top just to the left of Ed's finger. The little ledge just above his finger is Angel's Landing.





We get down around noon, and jump in the car to head out to Capitol Reef State Park. We need a place we can spend half a day, and Bryce is too big/awesome for that, and Canyonlands is too far out of the way. But Capitol Reef is at least sort of on the way (to Salt Lake City, where we fly out tomorrow morning), and neither of us has ever been there, so off we go.

Since we're on the road again, it's time to catch us up on mixes. First I pop in yesterday's mix:

8/24/07: Wide Open Spaces

1) Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens
2) February Morning Drive - David Francey
3) Into the Great Wide Open - Tom Petty
4) Don't Fence Me In - Bing Crosby
5) Ramblin' Man - The Allman Brothers
6) Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan
7) Desperado - The Eagles
8) Dust in the Wind - Kansas
9) The Wind - Cat Stevens
10) Gun Sale at the Church - The Beatfarmers
11) Cowtown - They Might Be Giants
12) Back in the Saddle Again - Gene Autry
13) American Girl - Tom Petty
14) Jingle Jangle Jingle - Kay Kyser
15) Theme from Rawhide - Blues Brothers Soundtrack
16) Me Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys - Willie Nelson
17) I Wanna Be a Cowboy - Boys Don't Cry
18) Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? - Paula Cole
19) A Cowboy Needs a Horse - Gonzo & Plaid
20) Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) - Big & Rich
21) A Horse with No Name - America
22) Wanted Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi

This from Ed: "The drive from Zion to Capitol Reef, most of it along Utah State Road 12, is easily the most beautiful drive I've ever done... and again, I can't tell you about nearly well enough, but everyone should do it- it's gorgeous. At one point, we were coming over a ridge and just as we get to the top and start heading down, with all this gorgeous, wide-open desert in front of us, 'Into the Great Wide Open' by Tom Petty gets to the chorus, and it was just one of those truly great moments... okay, enough of the gay shit."

A few pics from that leg:


Lunchtime! Fortunately, we've found the best home cookin' in the West.











More beautiful canyon country.












More beautiful country. And more Gus looking retarded.







Today's mix- 8/25/07: Reflections on life

1) Hello (Turn Your Radio on) - Shakespeare's Sister
2) Galileo - Indigo Girls
3) Little Conversations - Concrete Blonde
4) Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon
5) Only Time - Enya
6) The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles
7) Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
8) Carry on Wayward Son - Kansas
9) Gus the Theatre Cat - Cats Soundtrack
10) Superman (It's Not Easy) - Five for Fighting
11) Mrs. Potter's Lullaby - Counting Crows
12) Let's Get Together - The Youngbloods
13) People Get Ready - Eva Cassidy
14) Where Have All the Flowers Gone? - Kingston Trio
15) Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot
16) Marching Song of the Covert Battalions - Billy Bragg
17) King of Spain - Moxy Fruvous
18) Dallas - TV Themes
19) Rainbow Connection - Kermit

More from Ed: "I should say a bit about the driving- on the entire trip in general. We're having a pretty good time in the car, jamming to some sweet music, and making friends with other drivers s we go. There is a lot of shit-talking, me acting crazy (as usual) and Gus wondering if I've completely lost it. And for some reason, a ton of farting by both parties (must be those roadside diners). Those food places, by the way, are also awesome. Yes, we're getting pretty fat, but we've met some interesting people. Gus insists that people like me better because I'm friendlier, but I think he has a complex."

OK, I do not have a complex. But Ed, perhaps because of his inherently Cuban joie de vivre (or however you say that in Spanish), radiates a certain genial approachability that makes strangers want to talk to him. I've seen it at work in Manhattan bars, where more often than not we would be having a drink and chatting, and random women would come up and start talking to him. This almost never happens to me.

Now, I'm willing to grant that he has a certain Latin handsomeness that I don't have, but the staggering difference between how often that happens to him versus me cannot, I think, be explained solely by a handsomeness differential between us. At least some of it is due, I think, to what Laszlo calls an "attitude of openness" that Ed unconsciously projects. I think I have more of an "attitude of suspicion/hostility" toward strangers, which is why I perform so dismally in bars and at cocktail parties. On the second of our road trips back and forth between New Haven and St. Louis, at one point Laura said to me, almost totally out of the blue "you know, you're really kind of a snob. I mean, snob isn't exactly the right word, you're just ... extremely choosy ... about who you let in."

I suppose so. But it has been instructive on this trip, to see how stark the difference is, as we encounter waitresses, drivers, people in ballparks, etc. And it's the sort of thing I think about when driving in the wide open spaces of the West. That's why the themes of the road trip mixes for yesterday, today, and tomorrow are things like introspection, reflection, and nostalgia. If you ever need some time to think, take a drive through the big empty spaces in the West. You'll be surprised what bubbles up from the hidden places in your mind.

Anyway, we reach Capitol Reef at 615pm, 15 minutes after the visitor center closed. Fortunately, there's a little stack of maps accessible, so we grab one and find a hike we can do in the limited time before dark. We decide to walk the Grand Wash, which is a 1.5 hour hike through a totally dry river canyon. Then, when we reach the end of the Grand Wash, if it looks like there's time before dark, we'll hike up a 1.5 mile, 600 ft vertical rise trail to Cassidy's Arch.

This from Ed: "We get to the end around 730pm, and even though the sun is setting -rapidly- we thought 'Fuck it, we can get up to Cassidy's Arch and back down before it gets completely dark.' So we go... fast. It's steep at first and then levels out, so it's not too bad, but it keeps going and going all the way around the mountain until the trail ends and you have to keep walking out onto these huge rocks/boulders; it feels like you're walking on the surface of another planet."

The trickiest part is that with the trail ended, the only way to know if you're going in the right direction is that every so often there's a little stack of rocks, obviously not natural. And the tricky part about that is that it's rapidly getting dark, and we're climbing along the ridge of a mountain. And we have no flashlight.


Cassidy's Arch. It looks so small, and so close. Except that it's huge, and, it turns out, really far away.











The freaks come out at night...












Daylight fading- the landscape becomes otherworldly...










Cassidy's Arch. Let's play with perspective- two pictures taken from the same spot. This one...











...and this one. The sheer size of things around here can mess with your head.






For the record, Cassidy's Arch is very sturdy. I jumped up and down on it several times to test it. I figured if it started to collapse I would have enough time to make it to one side before plunging to my death. Of course, now the thing is probably going to collapse a couple hundred years sooner, but hopefully by then humans will have all become cyborgs and moved offplanet.

More from Ed: "We make it right at sunset (the moon is already up), and the arch is huge and awesome and we're really high up and the hike was definitely worth it. We soak it all in for a few minutes, and then we decide that we have to haul ass all the way back down. So we get started. We're moving fast, but not fast enough, and by the time we find the trail again, it is dark... completely dark. The only positive was that the moon was full, so we had the moonlight, but that was it. We couldn't really see where we were walking, but Gus led us down with his mountain man sense.

It took us 30-40 minutes to get back down to the canyon safely, and although we were happy to reach the bottom, now we had to walk 45 min back to the car through the canyon. That was a long, dark walk- darker than the hike down from the arch because the hgh canyon walls blocked a lot of the moonlight. I have to say, night hiking is pretty cool but pretty spooky. You can barely see anything, and the only way we knew where we going was that the canyon walls forced you to walk only in one direction."

Yeah, so it turns out that a flashlight is a good idea for evening/night hiking. On the other hand, it was fun telling scary stories in the dark, surrounded by long dark shadows and areas of pitch black, while walking through a deep canyon affording no clear escape route from anything. It gives you a new perspective on life.

We did make it back to the car around 945pm, and headed out for Salt Lake City, though not before stopping for some water (oh yeah, taking water with you is also a good idea on a hike, even if you think it's going to be short). By that time, all the stores in the area were closed, but at the second one we tried, Ed's natural geniality prompted the girl closing up shop to let us fill two giant cups with ice water. From there, we drove like mad for Salt Lake, and got to the outskirts a few hours later, where we promptly passed out.

BMFRTE Day 8: The Narrows

Fri 8/24 530 a.m., Zion National Park:

My phone alarm goes off. I fumble for it, and briefly flirt with the idea of pretending I didn't hear it, and then going back to sleep. Ed won't wake up unless I make him, and this 530 a.m. shit that seemed so doable yesterday now feels like sadomasochism.

Strangely, I was able to get up at 510 a.m. without a problem for 4 years in high school. I had to be out the door at 630 a.m., which is when my grandpa, who lived in our basement, went to work. My options were: (1) leave at 630 a.m. with him and get a ride to school, arriving at 645 a.m., with 15 minutes to do homework before the rec room (with 33 pool tables!) in the basement of SLU High opened, or (2) leave at 645 a.m. and walk 4 blocks, take two buses, and then walk 3 more blocks, arriving barely in time for homeroom. Obviously, I took option (1), primarily so that I could play pool. I typically played for an hour before school, 30-45 min during lunch, depending on how much homework was due in the afternoon classes, and an hour after school. By the time I graduated, I was pretty good.

But given that our little household had 4 men and 2 women, all of whom had to be out the door by 7, and exactly 1 bathroom, I had the option of a 5 minute cold shower at 610 a.m., or a 20 minute hot shower at 510 a.m. There aren't a lot of things that would make me choose waking up at 510 a.m. over 610 a.m., especially after going to bed at 1 a.m., which was my usual bedtime, but the early bird gets the hot water. BTW, with 1 bathroom, there was no concept of bathroom privacy in our household. People would wander in and out while you were showering, to go to the bathroom or use the sink or whatever, the whole time. I had to go to college and endure some early awkward moments before I realized that our household did not follow customary bathroom mores.

But once in college, I was a lot more likely to be going to bed at 530 a.m. than getting up at that time, and ever since, getting up before 8 a.m. is painful. And 530 a.m. is like death. So we almost don't make it.

But after sulking for a few minutes, I get up, and begin the hateful task of rousting Ed out of bed. This from Ed:

"We wake up at 530 a.m. That's not the asscrack of dawn; that's before dawn. There is no dawn yet. We get out of bed by 550, get our shit together, and head to Zion Adventure Company to catch the shuttle. We wait in the parking lot for the shuttle to arrive, and it's fucking cold. The sun is still not up."

(You can probably tell from the tenor of this what hanging out with Ed is like at 6 a.m.)

Eventually a beat-up white van driven by what Ed describes as "a hilarious fat dude" shows up to pick us up. It's nearly two hours' drive to the put-in point for our hike, a substantial portion of which is on what the driver calls "caca road". Ah yes, caca road. Thankfully, neither Ed nor I are the type to get car-sick. We both have lots of experience with caca road- Ed in South America, and me in Egypt, Kenya, India, and any non-interstate road in Texas.

When we finally do get to the top, it's still pretty early in the morning, so it's kinda cold, but we put on our gear and head out.


All dressed up and 16 miles to go...
















We start off along the river in the background of this picture of Ed. Soon the rising sun is high enough in the sky for us to be hiking in sunshine, and at that point it gets much hotter. Along the way, we find some neat stuff...











Wouldja lookitthat, I caught me a frawg!













Water break. I'm not the most photogenic person in the world, but this is the most retarded picture taken of me since the 4th grade.




Each year we had to have our pictures taken individually, for a "class composite" photo sheet. That year, my mom decided it would be "cute" to make me wear the most retarded shirt ever conceived- it was a light blue shirt that had a little pattern of dark blue cowboys on bucking broncos. What I tried - and failed - to impress upon my mother was that I wasn't 5 anymore, and that at my current age, and size relative to the other boys, "cute" was roughly equivalent to "deadly". But she wrestled it onto me, and then had to drag me, quite literally, kicking and screaming to the car. Once there, I splayed my arms and legs as wide as possible and grabbed onto anything I could to try and prevent my mom from being able to get me into the car. But eventually she was able to pry my hands off the edge of the car and stuff me inside. Once we got to school, she again had to fight me, as I did everything I could to stay in the car. She ended up pulling me out by the ankle and dumping me out on the sidewalk, then jumped back into the car and drove off before I could get back in. By that point, I had been spotted by the nuns, so I had no chance to make a break for home on foot, which I was entirely ready to do, even though it was a solid mile through not a great neighborhood.

My only revenge, in my 10 year old mind at least, was to sabotage the picture. So, the 4th grade class composite for Notre Dame Elementary in 1982 is a sheet of a bunch of good little Catholic boys and girls, in their pious little poses... and then there's me, hair messed up as much as possible (which was a lot- although this may be hard for you to picture, back then I had thick, wavy, bushy Asian hair), and literally snarling at the camera.

So I had my vengeance. Mom flipped out. And ever since then she has had hers- she happily shows that picture whenever friends come over. That one, and the one of when I was a baby and shat on myself so bad, she just dumped me in a bucket. "Look, here's one of naked, shitty, Gus-in-a-bucket." My mom is one of the funniest people you'll ever meet, in her own special way.

Anyway, back to the hike, where it is continuing to heat up, and we are continuing to find cool shit...

Lookit! Lookit! Now I caught me a lizzard...












Not long after this, as we are walking, I hear a weird shrieking noise coming from some rocks to the side of us. I eventually pinpoint the noise as coming from underneath a small pile of rocks...


A bat! Although you probably can't see it, he's shrieking because a bee is trying to land on his nose.






Yes folks, today is a Grand Day. For today, Ed and I have at last discovered, The Bat Cave.

This is the Best MutherFucking Road Trip _Ever_.

From this point, the river started seriously carving Zion Canyon:

So many nifty side canyons to explore...


















Waterfalls to have to find a way down...

















It's getting pretty hot in here, and Ed is taking off a distressing amount of clothes...

















From this point on, we're hiking pretty much entirely in the river...
















It eventually gets waist deep...


















Nearing the end of our journey...














This from Ed: "As we go on, the river is flowing down into the canyon that it has carved out over millions of years, so the canyon walls around us are getting taller and narrower. plus, there is less river bank, so eventually we are just walking in the river, with water up to our waists in some places, trying our damndest not to fall because it's almost entirely rocs- wet rocks. Needless to say, we learned that the walking sticks were indeed, as we were told they would be, our most important pieces of equipment. There is no way to navigate some parts of that river without holding yourself up with that stick. Those sticks certainly saved our asses a couple of times.

The hike is long- 16 miles that took us 10.5 hours- and exhausting, but unlike anything I'd ever done before and well worth it. Along the way, BTW, we ran into 3 dudes who were also from New York. Small world. Not only that, one of the guys lives just a few blocks from me in Manhattan, and another of the guys went to college with me, graduated the year after I did, and lived in my dorm. I still had no idea who he was. Still, what are the chances of meeting those guys in the middle of a fucking canyon in Utah?"

The first time I ever came to Zion National Park, I was a freshman at Pomona. It was the first road trip my girlfriend Tasha and I took together. In college I tended to, as they say, burn the candle at both ends. I regularly went to bed around 4 a.m. and got up at 730. I was stretched pretty thin, and by the time spring break came around, all I wanted was to get far away from Pomona. So I found Zion on a map, figured we could go there and camp, and do some backcountry hiking. I'd be hundreds of miles away and totally able to put my hectic Pomona life out of my mind.

Upon arriving, the first hike we did was the Hidden Canyon hike, which winds along a cliff several hundred feet above the canyon floor, at points literally going around the edge of the cliff face on a ledge barely wider than your feet, hanging on by a chain drilled into the side of the cliff. After you get around that, there a steep climb, and then it lets you into a canyon carved up in the cliff that is, in fact, completely hidden from the canyon floor.

You can probably guess where this story is heading- so after driving for several hours, across hundreds of miles, and hanging from the side of the cliff, and climbing up to the top, to finally at last stand in the Hidden Canyon, and revel in staggering beauty and sheer Pomonalessness of the place, what do find up there? Our dorm RA's. I was incensed, and about to shout "IS THERE NO PLACE ON THIS GOD'S EARTH I CAN GO TO GET AWAY FROM THIS DAMNED SCHOOL????" but Tasha, who was perceptive in many ways and probably saw that coming, shoved me aside and expressed our great surprise and joy at seeing them there. So I just stayed quiet and sullen until they left.

Point being, it didn't surprise me quite as much to run into these guys. It's a small world after all.

We did, after many hours, eventually reach the end of the hike, and straggled out of the river to catch the park shuttle back to town.



We live!











So, after a fine dinner of local pizza, local beer (Ed) and local fruit juice (Me), we headed back to the hotel and passed out. Ed didn't even watch SportsCenter. That's how tired we were...

BMFRTE Day 7: Vegas/Zion

Thu, 8/23, 645 a.m., mom's basement:

I wake Ed up.

Despite Ed's somewhat petite stature, waking him up at 645 a.m. is like waking up a premenstrual grizzly bear by poking it in the ass with a hot iron. Although it's difficult to be sure, given the speed at which Ed spewed outraged expletives upon being told he had to get up, using the 1-2-3 point framework [see BMFRTE Day 3] I am confident I scored over a million points this morning.

We quickly get ready, because we have to leave by 7 to have a prayer of getting to the airport on time for our 8:20 flight. We get all our stuff together and head up the stairs, Ed sullenly pointing out the whole time that he hates, in no particular order, me, everyone, me, the world, me, and life.


Me and mom












Given that it's approaching rush hour, and there's construction on the main highway leading to the airport, our plan is for my mom to drive us to the train station in Forest Park, where we will catch the train to the airport. A simple, reliable plan that should get us there with very little margin for error, given that we are already ten minutes late (7:10 a.m.), but nevertheless OK provided we hit no major disasters.

7:15 a.m.- Major Disaster #1:

My mom, who has been picking me up and dropping me off at this very train station more or less every time I've visited home in the last ten years, gets lost driving across the park, in broad daylight. At 1300 acres (versus 850 acres for Central Park in NYC), and laced with curving roads that go nowhere, Forest Park is not a trivial thing to get lost in. By the time we get unlost, and get to the train station, it's 7:40 a.m. We are now 25 min behind schedule, but there's still an outside chance we'll make it, provided we get a train quickly...

7:42 a.m.- Major Disaster #2:

This from Ed: "We're already running a bit behind, but we catch a train pretty quickly, so it all looks good... until we realize that we're on the wrong train. That's right, this is Gus's hometown, and we got on the wrong fucking train."

OK, I want to say a word in my defense. The Forest Park station was long ago planned to be the starting point of a new rail spur into the county. For the last 6 years or so, that new line has been under construction, and every time in those six years that I've used that station, it's been fine, because the new line wasn't finished and until it was, only one type of train ever came through the Forest Park station. So excuse me for not knowing that a couple of months ago, the new line was finally completed, and now two types of trains go through the station. But hey, you say, with only two options, you still only had a 50% chance of getting on the wrong train, right?

Wrong.

A little known statistical effect, which I call the Gus Factor, takes a simple 50-50 favorable/unfavorable binary outcome distribution and transforms the favorable outcome into a 3-sigma normal distribution event. Put another way, the odds of my getting on the wrong train were actually closer to 99.7%. I have no mathematical explanation for the Gus Factor, only a vague ontological one that involves a deity with a sense of humor that is both deeply ironic and fundamentally retributive in nature.

Anyway, by the time we identify we're on the wrong train, get off of it, run up the stairs and over the tracks to the other side, wait for a train back to the Forest Park station, and get back there, it is 7:57. Fortunately, a correct train shows up at 7:58. We arrive at the airport at 8:08 a.m., with only 12 min remaining until our flight is scheduled to take off. I am praying for it to be delayed. We run from the train through the East terminal to Southwest's self-check-in area, and I print our boarding passes. We run for security. There are only 6 min left until departure, and we need a miracle now. Instead, we get:

Major Disaster #3 (8:15 a.m.):

Ed, who is inexplicably carrying the entire contents of the Travel Size Lotions/Shampoos aisle from Bed, Bath and Beyond in his carry-on luggage, gets stopped in the security line and pulled aside for the intensive baggage inspection. I have already gotten through the line when I notice this, and Ed hands me his boarding pass and says to run to the gate, which is fortunately right across from security. So I hit the gate right as they are about to close the door. I explain that Ed is over there in security getting his bag inspected, and the Southwest agent takes both our boarding passes, puts me on the plane, and promises he'll get Ed on the plane before letting it take off. I'm a little worried that Ed doesn't have his boarding pass anymore, but i explained to the gate agent what he looks like, and it's all out of my hands now.

A few minutes later, Ed comes running on the plane. He gets the last seat, not too far away, and when the seatbelt light goes off in flight tells me his experience in security. This from Ed: "As they still go through my bag, they find a bottle of suntan lotion and confiscate it. Okay, great. But now they have to put my bag back through the x-ray. At that moment, for the first time in my life, they page me over the loudspeaker: 'Eduardo Perez, please report to your gate for immediate boarding." So I run out from the security area, leaving my bags behind, and yell at the guy that my bags are going through the machine. He says, into the loudspeaker, 'Eduardo, we need you on this plane right now!" I run back to security and practically crawl onto the conveyor belt to grab my bags and haul ass onto this plane. Incredibly, we make the flight- the last two people on the plane."

So we did make it, thanks to a friendly gate agent at Southwest who as near as I can tell violated about 8,000 security rules in our post-9/11 world.

The flight was good- we had the Comedy Flight Crew, which made the trip more enjoyable. And finally we got to Vegas, where we picked up our rental car, ran a couple quick errands, and then took Ed for his first meal at:


Ambrosia- the food of the gods












From there, we drove around the strip...



Downtown Las Vegas. It's 'Fabulous'. Either this sign is 50 years old or the LV Chamber of Commerce is staffed entirely by gay people.



... and Ed took a picture of every casino. Every last one of them. Right now my computer has 3 million pictures of casinos on it. But I notice he did take one other:

Because really- is there anything more quintessentially American than topless cheerleaders?








From Vegas, we headed north, toward Zion National Park, which is a nice drive that goes through the Virgin River gorge.


AZ State motto: "We have a giant hole in the ground that's crawling with cars, old people, & cheap hotels. And when you get tired of Phoenix, you can visit the Grand Canyon!"






Clever, putting a skier on the sign. Only about .00000001% of Utah is actually ski-able. The other 99.99999999% of it is an empty fucking desert populated only by sagebrush and creepily happy Mormons.


The Virgin River Gorge is beautiful and I recommend you do this drive at some point in your life. Since today is the day we technically will cover the most ground traveling, via one form or another, today's mix is:

8/23/07: Covering Ground

1) Like a Prayer - John Wesley Harding
2) Personal Jesus - Johnny Cash
3) The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum - Collide
4) Folsom Prison Blues - Keb' Mo
5) Across the Universe - Rufus Wainwright
6) Land of Confusion - Disturbed
7) When Doves Cry - Patti Smith
8) Boyz in the Hood - Dynamite Hack
9) Bitches Ain't Shit - Ben Folds
10) Sucker MC's - Lordz of Brooklyn
11) Gin & Juice - Phish
12) Hot in Heere - Jenny Owen Youngs
13) Baby Got Back - Jonathan Coulton
14) Paul Revere - Asylum Street Spankers
15) Get Your Freak On - KT Tunstall
16) Crazy - Shawn Colvin
17) Volare - Gypsy Kings
18) Wonderwall - The Mike Flowers Pop
19) Hallelujah - John Cale

We got to the park around 630, and booked a hotel just outside the park. This from Ed:

"Our plan was this: do the hike to Angel's Landing in Zion that evening, drive to Bryce Canyon the next day for more hiking, and then go to Canyonlands and Arches the day after that. However, that plan was quickly amended when, while checking in at the hotel, Rachel -so nice- told us about hiking The Narrows. Basically, it's a 16 mile, 12 hour hike along (and in) the Virgin River through its canyon and through the canyon's narrowest point. Immediately this sounds cool to us, so we head into Zion to get passes to do the hike the next day. You need passes because they only let 80 people per day do the hike.

We get the passes, and the ranger tells us all about the dangers of flash flooding, how we should take enough food for a couple days in case we get stuck in the canyon waiting out a flood, and how we can rent special waterproof shoes and socks because we will be walking through the river itself. We then call the place to reserve space on the shuttle bus -the 630 a.m. shuttle bus- that takes us to the start of the river and the hike. We also find out that we need to go to a special fitting for the shoes tonight at 730, so that means we won't be hiking to Angel's Landing tonight."

So we head off to the fitting. The "fitting" consists primarily of watching a 30 minute video presentation whose primary content is a thorough and detailed explanation of every way that people have died on this hike. It's awesome. Danger! Ha! Ed and I scoff at danger! But we do end up renting the special shoes, and special socks, and waterproof bags for food and the camera. On the way out, one of the people working there tries to hand us special walking sticks, about shoulder high, which she says are free. Now, laden down as we are with all this special safety stuff, Ed and I are feeling a lot less manly. I mean, you never see Indiana Jones watching safety videos or renting special shoes and socks. But at this point who gives a shit, and they're free, so we take them.

We drop the stuff off at the hotel, and decide to walk the mile into town to a place called Blondie's to get some dinner. More from Ed:

"The walk is cool because it's dusk, the road is dark, and the sun is setting behind these mountains that surround the town. There are also an assload of bats zipping around our heads; Gus assures me that the bats will use their sonar to echolocate us and thus not slam into our faces.

As he says this, a bat grazes his head."

You know, with millions of bats zipping around, it's statistically likely that one of them drives like Tom. And given what Jonathan calls my "little black karma cloud", almost a statistical certainty that this bat would eventually crash into me. Sigh.

"We both order elk burgers at Blondie's; we figure the elk is fresh since we just walked by an elk farm which is, literally, right next to the diner."

This is an Elk. A dark Elk. Photographed at night, against a dark background. Ansel Adams we are not.





For the record, Elk burgers are delish. I highly recommend them.

From Blondie's we head back to the hotel, pack up our gear, and go to bed. Tomorrow will be another day getting up "at the asscrack of dawn"...