maximum strength

sunday, october 14 was day one on the road.

it was approximately 3:36 pm EST when i pulled out of sister emily's apartment complex at michigan state. i got slightly choked up for a few reasons:

1) it was nursing an absolute stunner of a headache related to consuming roughly 4,000 fluid ounces of beer the night before.

2) i thought for a few seconds about the laundry list of car repairs that had totalled $1400 just a few days prior.

3) interpol was on the radio (haha ok i made this up. i was listening to the watson twins).

4) i was (and still am) ecstatic about pushing on in a new direction. i had this serious rush of adrenaline that zipped up my spine. i felt proud.

driving the truck, window down, rain pissing from the sky and southern kentucky music creeping through the stereo-- hellish rebel yells are certainly in order. when i went to unleash the thing i realized my vocal chords were still soaked in booze and not capable of creating such a sound.

later on as i whiz-banged along I-94-- roughly 15 miles from the lights of the windy city-- i was damn close to heading right back to the corner of clark and diversey where i had spent the last month+ sleeping on the couch of 3 more-than-gracious friends. i knew that if i stopped i wouldnt be leaving anytime soon though.

it was hard enough leaving chicago the first time.

i felt like i departed at the height of my existence in that city. i was just settling in. i was just getting used to dance parties from 3-7am. i was just getting weaved in to some new social circles. i had just gotten a new bike. i knew the place with arguably the best scones in america. and then it was time to leave.

but time to leave for what?

refreshment. discovery. change.

and where?

weelllllllllllll. working on that.

in its simplest terms, i am leaving because there comes a time in all of our lives where we have a situation before us that that is not performing to a certain level of expectation. at that moment of realization we make a conscious decision. this decision becomes a choice between two things: adjust to the current ill-fitting situation or make a change that will attempt to correct the fault.

i am going for the latter.

now shit, there's plenty of other good things to talk about aside from me ranting about decisions in life or the lack thereof.

i decided somewhere in iowa along the desolate and rainy I-80 interstate that it was time for some food.

finding mcdonald's was the first priority as i am the proud owner of an arch card-- this being a refillable mcdonald's charge card. yep. i can thank mr jeffery brown for such a gracious gift to send me on the road.

i nestled in to a window seat with one order of chicken selects, a medium fry and the biggest motherfucking pop container mcdonald's would give me. i think it amounted to about 1/2 gallong. apparently these items get remarkably bigger in states like iowa.

mcdonald's has opted to start the monopoly game once again and just like every other time this happens, i become extremely voracious about collecting the pieces. stupid. i ripped off the game piece that was attached to my gigantic pop container-- this yielded me 10% off at foot locker. see, this made me angry because i have no use for polyurethane basketball sneakers at this point in my life. i still tucked it in my backpack that was sitting in the chair next to me. next was my french fry container. these game pieces provided to be rather difficult to remove and my bear claws managed to rip the box in half. awesome. this violence paid off as i accrued connecticut and illinois avenue.

this competitive behavior will eventually lead to me winning a car at McD.com.

or something like that.

the guy seated roughly 11 feet from me in the closest booth nearest the television set made me consider cutting my mullet off. two damn good reasons:

1) he obviously has one and the rear portion (this would be the longer hair in the back) looks as though it has been soaking in the McNugget deep fryer for the last 14 hours or so. i wanted to vomet. seriously.

2) this mullet-man consumed for himself a horse's share of mcdonald's fast food. his dinner consisted of one double quarter pounder cheeseburger (i had to look borderline suspicious as i stared trying to figure out of it was a hamburger or a cheeseburger), one super sized order of french fries, one big mac and approximately one liter of ketchup to be coated liberally on all of the items ordered and the perimeter of his lips. remarkably, this man opted out of purchasing a soft drink.

disgusting.

that night i slept at a rest area off of I-80 just east of omaha.

this of course put new meaning to the bob seger tune citing his existence "on a long and lonesome highway, east of omaha." come on, you remember the song.

...you bet your ass i put "turn the page" on the stereo before calling it a night. i slept upright in the drivers seat because i had too much shit crammed in the rear cab to comfortably stretch out. i woke up the next morning with something of a pain in my back. turns out i had slept on my flashlight all night.

awesome.

the next day as i rumbled along I-80 i thought the entire state of nebraska was in a state of alert with the amount of news conferences that were cutting off the standard NPR broadcast schedule. as i continued to listen to the radio i was thinking there was a tornado spotted, perhaps a serial killer was on the loose.

nope.

the university of nebraska had fired their athletic director steve pederson.

absurd.

i quickly came to the conclusion that there probably wasnt a whole lot to talk about in this state other than potentially wheat and corn prices.

(writers note: i have never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been this bored whilst driving. the rows and rows of corn and wheat fields paralyzed my skull for 10 straight hours.)

i quickly realized there wasnt a whole lot of other things to talk about in nebraska. so it made sense. the good folks of this state needed something to talk about though and getting that message to the people was more important than apparently everything that could conceivably be heard over the airwaves.

i opted for the ipod for the rest of the evening.

there were two highlights of day two on the road (lists are of paramount importance on this post apparently):

1) i saw a truck driver escape from what was a SERIOUS blast. the entire front cab of an 18-wheeler blew to smithereens right in front of me on the other side of the interstate (he was travelling eastbound). there was roughly 10 miles of traffic backed up and probably 3/4 of nebraska's police force on the scene.

here is a photo: http://www.ketv.com/news/14350130/detail.html#

2) omaha was a nice town indeed. i happened upon a quaint little coffee shop called 13th street coffee company that served a tasty cup of joe. i parked it at a table near the window where i was able to leaf through their weekly arts magazine aptly titled "city weekly." no real good shows were around, but i flipped across a page that had a photo of a guy riding a bike. this reminded me that i had my own bike in the back of my truck. this eventually led to me taking a sweet little joyride through the city. judging by the gasps of air that i was trying to reel in to my lungs after the ride, something tells me i am going to need to focus on getting a little more exercise these next couple months.

after a day overflowing with hands placed on the steering wheel, i pulled in to denver-town at 8:33 pm MDT.

within an hour so i was enjoying a he-man sized hamburger with my good friend matt. we picked up right where we had left off and began reminiscing about the good 'ol days living in sydney.

DENVER.

a fine city.

atitude, good people, perpetually blue sky and modern city collide to create a pleasing little locale.

based on the learnings of my good 'ol pappy, i used the "good morning" test to get a feel for the people on day 2 in the city. this test consists of saying good morning to 5 complete strangers that are not expecting you to say a word to them. therefore, this would exclude saying goodmorning to the attendant at the coffee shop as she could very well be expecting you to say something to her.

let me tell you people, i went 5 for 5 in the great city of denver. this includes words exchanged with a man most closely resembling a sleeping bum on the corner of 6th avenue and corona-- arguably not the easiest of tasks. he was number 5 though and i wanted to really give this city a serious look.

the people remain the most impressive feature of this city. genuine describes them best.

on day 3 in the city it was clear i had one goal for the day: find a an industrial strength, costco sized barrel of odor-eaters foot powder. yeah, now think to yourself how the bona-fide people of denver meandered their way in to this story-- cause that's where i am going with this.

mission accomplished at 12:33 pm.

i threw down my pile of goods at the checkout counter of rite-aid. an older, rather eccentric looking woman with a nametag that read "Ducee" would be taking care of this transaction today. she started scanning my items.

"how do you pronounce your name?" i inquired.

"do say," she quickly responded. i got the feeling this was a fairly common question given the speed and efficiency of her reply.

she paused.

"does this odor-eaters stuff really work?"

i had to have been blushing at this point. this trip to rite-aid was single-handedly responsible for exposing two mildly embarrassing problems. the first of which being my smelly feet, evidenced by the barrel of odor-eaters i hoisted on to the counter. and this was not the normal tub that you typically pick up at the store. in big, bright hot yellow letters across the top of the container it read "MAXIMUM STRENGTH." and then just below that it read "33% more BONUS PACK!" so not only did i need the superpower of foot powder, i needed a whole hell of a lot of it to keep me from going sour between my toes.

well, it didnt stop there.

the second of the embarrassing moments came with the exposure of my newly aquired, horrendously disgusting dandruff problem. i was purchasing dandruff shampoo. no big deal, right? well once again-- its not like i was just buying a bottle of head and shoulders or selsun blue. nope. i have to buy the t-gel (this is the stuff that goes on with roughly the thickness of straight 40 weight motor oil and leaves you feeling like you just endured chemical burns throughout your scalp). and once again, it has this particular type of dandruff shampoo clearly reads across the label that it is 65% stronger than head and shoulders.

i was feeling awkward at this point as ducee read the label.

ohhhhhhh god. please woman, just let me leave at this point. i quickly chucked a pack of gum on the counter to defer her attention.

i weaseled out a reply to ducee's question that had parted her lips 10 seconds earlier.

"well to be honest with you ducee, i have never actually tried the odor-eaters before."

"well, let me know how it goes for you. maybe stop back in or something."

"uhhhhh, sure. yeah. bye ducee."

this is what i am talking about.

in chicago ducee wouldn't do so much as look up from her stoop at the checkout counter. in new york, i would expect something similr. in los angeles, she probably wouldnt even speak english. but i felt some sort of warmth with ducee as she instructed me to return to rite-aid and give her a rundown of how the foot powder was tending to my odor problem.

this is the sort of genuineness that i am talking about. the good people of denver have a certain charm about them. this came as something of a surprise given the typical "big city" mentality.

i haven't held back much on the city wandering throughout the last week and this got me in to some cool places.

the denver art museum has an incredibly awesome looking external structure. it was reminiscient of federation square in melbourne. inside there is a cool collection of african art that was impressive. their modern art stuff was perplexing. my favorite was this man ray guy that does lenseless photography. you get these odd looking images where an object is placed directly on unexposed photographic paper to create a photographic image when exposed to light. kind of weird and hard to explain.

tonight i am headed to see caribou at a place called the larimer lounge-- pretty excited for this i have never seen the guy live. his new album 'andorra' is pretty shweet so i am expecting good things.

i was fortunate enough to happen upon floyd's barber shop where i was able to get a tune up on the old mullet. unfortunately the gal chopped a little more than i had bargained for in the back so i will have to give it some time before i get in to acceptable mullet territory.

i spent some time up in the mountains near a place called silverthorne-- for those that ski/snowboard it is near copper mountain, keystone and breckenridge. we holed up at about 11,000 ft and i experienced the whole booger problem to an extreme. during the course of the evening it snowed about 6 inches which of course caused me to curse and get unneccessarily frustrated. i will be interested to see what wyoming and montana do for me.

pressing onward!

the routing at this point is something like (in this order... for now):

colorado: crested butte, grand junction, fruita
utah: moab, canyonlands national park, salt lake city
wyoming: jackson hole, teton, yellowstone
montana: jackson hole, bozeman
idaho: ketchum, boise
washington: spokane, seattle
oregon: portland, hood river, bend, coos bay
california: all of the pacific coast, yosemite
arizona: flagstaff, grand canyon
new mexico: albequerque, santa fe

then it gets unclear at that point.

i met up with brad my traveling partner extraoirdinaire the other day and we have been constructing the sleeping platform in the back of the truck. this thing is absolutely stunning if i do say so myself-- complete with a padded sleeping area and shag carpet. yep. the "bed" consists of a platform over the wheel wells. its nice though because there is good storage area underneath. the bikes will either sit on top of the platform or harnessed to the carrier mounted to the rear bumper.

excitement.

wednesday morning = blast-off.