Day 2: Colorado, Gummied

I left Nowhere late with a slight Cup of Noodles hangover. I got coffee from the local Pump n Piss and ate a green apple from the sack in the back of my car. I headed West. I left I-70 for the enjoyment of Highway 24. My unbalanced tires shook my steering wheel while I sped to Colorado Springs, birthplace of hall of fame pitcher Goose Gossage, and current home of the guys who bring you ‘Rockets That Blow Shit Up.’ Shake your head back and forth really fast – thats what Colorado Springs looked like through my car windows. I thought about stopping, but then I remembered that I’m not a trust-fund baby ski bunny hippy, so I kept on moving.

Somehow, just outside of Colorado Springs, I ended up on Highway 115. I didn’t ask questions, I just headed South. Highway 50 took me to Salida, where I stopped at a Burger King. I had a Number 5, it was the worst meal I ever had, with a side order of onion rings. I washed it all down with some tap water from last night’s hotel room. The water wasn’t too bad. I’d only listened to Menomena’s ‘Friend or Foe?,’ 10 times during the course of the trip so I gave it another go.

I tried to stick to scenic routes because I believe in Rule #43 of the road: If you are on a roadtrip and you are more than 300 miles from your point of departure and you are still driving on the Interstate, you are NOT in fact on a roadtrip, you are on a commute. The Rockies were nice on this leg of my trip and I had yet to hit anything with my car. The day was going well. Obviously, it would get worse.

The road got a little windier around Cimarron, but nothing too much for a 2000 Chevy Malibu with poor brakes to handle. The Burger King in my stomach was calling for an exit out the back door, so I let it go at 6,500 feet in a rest stop/ scenic overlook bathroom where it fell a nice six foot into a pit of other people’s used Burger King meals. The bathroom had no running water, but the caretakers had furnished it, nicely, with a large bottle of hand sanitizer. I spun out of the rest stop, wondering how often the state had to pump out all the crap and where they took it.

I came screaming down the mountains into a small, valley town called Montrose, which I believe in French means ‘pink mountain.’ It wasn’t pink and it wasn’t a mountain. I worried my French was getting rusty.

I stopped at a gas station run by a future mass murderer and his teenage lover. Outside, a woman was milling around the pumps and remarking to strangers how she thought the town was ‘just the cutest darn little place.’ She looked like she ran an antique store in a little midwestern town. She asked a kid in his twenties who was driving a dirty, little station wagon if he lived there. ‘Yes m’am,’ the kid replied, ‘and it is lovely, but this winter we had to wait nearly a week to get out of the town while they cleared the pass.’ ‘Oh my,’ the old lady said back. I paid for the gas at the pump with my credit card and took off. Clearly, these people were on drugs.

I headed South on Highway 550. Just before I left Montrose, I stopped at a Hastings to get a few compact discos. Hastings is, apparently, a Barnes and Noble without coffee. The employee recommendations were all for albums from 2002. Maybe the town had been snowed in for longer than the kid at the gas station had first let on. I was looking for the new Beirut album. They didn’t have it. I bought ‘Return to Cookie Mountain,’ because I had lost my previous copy, and the new Mars Volta.

At Ridgeway, Colorado, I came to a fork, and I had two decisions: Stay on 550, a nice safe route that wondered nicely down to Durango, or take Highway 62, a suicidal road that climbed, angrily, into the mountains. Day was getting on its way so I stayed on 550. The road was nice, bending easily around a little river and after a few minutes I found myself in a town that seemed to be more populated with mountain deers than with people. About 40 minutes down the road a great, blinking black and yellow sign broke my spirit. ‘Truck Roll-Over, 550 Closed,’ it said. I turned around while the sun got depressingly low in the sky.

I tuned my radio to the AM traffic channel to see if I could get a report on the truck accident. Though the robot on the radio didn’t seem to be sure what exactly had happened, I was able to gather enough information to determine this: A large truck filled to capacity with the toxic fluid used to make gummy bears and gummy worms had rolled, spilling its load all over the highway. An emergency clean-up crew had been assembled to clean the road, but it wasn’t clear if they’d ever be able to get all the gummy off the road. The trucker, suspiciously, was no where to be found, but a family vacationing from Ohio had reported seeing a large man, covered head to foot in hair, racing into the woods just after the crash. I couldn’t be sure the Sasquatch had rolled the truck on purpose, but I suspected he had.

I raced back to the fork in the road I had passed an hour earlier, hoping the other road West would be a nice, short jaunt up and through the Rocky Mountains. When I got to the intersection and turned West I was greeted with a short sign that labeled my new road ‘The San Juan Skyway.’ ‘San Juan’ meant nothing to me, but ‘Skyway’ didn’t sound too promising. It was dusk as I sped along the turns and bends of Highway 62, but the roads were still fairly clean, so I drove fast. I came to another intersection, one way stayed West, the other South to Telluride and Smoker. I headed South. As I climbed my way up the mountains the roads got worse and all the cars were headed the other way. I met them in great caravans tearing down the snow covered slopes. Was I the only car headed up? It seemed so. I began driving in near tunnels of plowed snow. The steady night wind was bringing the snow back down the mountain and forming short, soft snowdrifts that I bounced over like a happy little sledder. The road turned to ice and I was all alone. The drifts got larger and harder and now I hit them more like an angry, drunk sledder. The drifts jerked my wheels. I turned out my dash lights so I could see the shades of black and gray that everything had become with my wired, sleepy eyes.

I drove white-knuckled for what must have been hours. Every mountain I climbed I thought was my last, but ripping through the valleys I was always confronted by another mountain on the other side. Somewhere along the road I came behind another sad, lonely car. The car was falling apart and the wheels looked near to falling off its rusted body. I followed the car up and down a few shorter mountains, and as my headlights danced through its back windows I saw the backs of the passengers heads and the sides of their faces. They looked to be Cuban revolutionaries on a ski holiday. The awkward wobble of their car suggested they had been drinking so on one long run down the mountain I passed them and left them to their business.

Suddenly, I came out of the mountains. I tore out of the mountains like a fresh born baby. Refreshed, I check my clock. It was nearly 8 p.m. and the nerd in me was worried I would miss ‘Lost.’ Now I was on the ‘Trail of Ancients.’ I wondered about the symbolism, but I spotted a string of hotel lights before I could figure it all out. I drove into Cortez, Colorado and pulled into a Day’s Inn. The young man at the desk gave me a room. I had just laid my bags on the floor of my room when my television show started.

I made myself a sandwich during a commercial break and I got a Sprite from a vending machine on the lower level of the hotel. The hotel was a real piece of shit. It was one hell of a Sprite though.

Day 1: Unfavorable Opinions of Native Nebraskan Peoples

At noon I headed South. What was the weather like? Maybe it was horrible. Yes, it was horrible behind me. I left just in time. It snowed on my back bumper all the way to Omaha like Winter was chasing me, but my front tires were on clean, dry pavement the whole time. A snowstorm blew in my rear view mirror and the Loess Hills turned white behind me. In Omaha, I turned West toward Lincoln. I was four hours into the trip and I was bored. I looked for a decent Omaha radio station, but one doesn’t exist. I listened to a few minutes of heavy metal to make sure I still hated it, I confirmed my opinion. I think it was a song by Satan’s Toothpick or Feces Eyeliner or The Ninja Turtles of Metal. Who could be sure? They all sound the same.

I drove as fast on I-80 as my car could go, but it wasn’t fast enough.

Five hours into the trip and I reached York, Nebraska. I stopped to get gas and some cornnuts at a BP. Inside the woman behind the counter looked about to die. She looked stuck. Everybody in Nebraska is stuck. Ask them and they’ll tell you, ‘Oh me, I’m just passing through. I’m just living in Nebraska while I [insert some strange task here]. I’m headed to [somewhere other than Nebraska] after I’m done with that.’ The most common reason people live in Nebraska: They got a flat tire and they’ve been waiting 26 years for a jack or a few missing lugnuts. Nebraska is like quick sand, you’d best keep moving. Outside the convenience store some high schoolers were drinking sodas and socializing. They were headed to a high school girl’s basketball game, and they looked like suicidal zombies. I headed South, again.

I took 81 to 36 and 36 to 281 and 281 to 383 and 383 to 24 and 24 to I-70. It was night by the time I got to the Interstate. I spent the night in some town near the Kansas/Colorado border. Which town? It doesn’t make any difference, they’re all the same. I made a cup of noodles from the hot water provided by the in-room coffee pot and I watched the television. There was nothing else to do. In the guest directory under ‘Things to Do/See While You Are Here’ it said: Enjoy the hot water from COFFEE POT by making CUP OF NOODLES and fall asleep watching TELEVISION. I don’t know for sure, but I think the Sasquatch was sleeping in the room next to mine. I never saw him, but I think I could here him snore.