DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days thirty-two and thirty-three.: zeroenthusiasm

zeroenthusiasm

DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days thirty-two and thirty-three.

Jul 25, 2011 14:47

Our last view of Wyoming.

442 miles.

We corresponded with the trucker during the day. He said he was having truck trouble in Kansas City, which I translated as, "I'm going to ditch you." But we tried to stay positive. He said he would be coming through Cheyenne that night and would probably want to get some sleep. So the best thing for us to do was to pack our things at the house and go to work with Kelly at 10. We left our bags in her car and sat in Subway for the time being. We wound up getting subs with ice-cold onions that hurt my teeth. We started watching a movie on my laptop called Peep World. Kelly took time out to sit and hang out with us. She bought us a bag of chips and even read the ingredients for us. It was so cute! We asked her to write down her address so we could send her a postcard while on our travels.

Around 1, a finely chiseled, tan man wearing a black wifebeater and a silver necklace around his neck walked up to us and, in a cinematically suave manner said, "I am Elvis." I feel like he might as well have had a rose between his teeth. I shook his hand and he smiled at us with perfect teeth. "Ready to go?" He changed his mind about getting some sleep there and we were perfectly fine with that. The sooner we were outta there, the better. After we got our things from her car, we gave Kelly big hugs goodbye. I'm pretty sure she was on the verge of tears as we walked out the door, which was very sad to watch. I will never forget that family and how uniquely hospitable and kind they were to us. Elvis was riding a red truck that was hauling plastic containers from Kansas City. He was on his way to Salt Lake City because that was where he lived. And yes, Elvis was his real name. We started talking once we got into the truck with him. After trying to peg him as Italian or Hispanic, we found out he was from Bosnia originally. After the war, he moved to Croatia and then to Germany, where he stayed until 1998, when he moved to America. When we asked if America was a lot better than Bosnia, he still scoffed and said, "No, not at all." He said he was a family man and loved his job as a trucker. He owned his truck, so he was able to do what he wanted when he wanted. He owned property in Bosnia that he still sometimes visits, has a wife, and two young kids. He was only two years older than me! His accent was strong, but so was his English. When we asked him how he found us, he told us he's on Craigslist a lot and tries to help people as often as he can. Despite being Muslim and very different from us, he accepted everything we said with a live-and-let-live attitude. He was quite the gentleman. Outside, to my right, the Big Dipper hung in the sky more clearly than I'd ever seen it before. As we rode up 80-west, the road seemed endless like a black carpet. We were surrounded by more night sky than land. The oncoming light of the opposing traffic illuminated the corpses of insects on the front windshield as their bodies were demolished within a mere tap sound.

At almost 4 in the morning, he decided it was time to get some sleep. He had already been awake since 8AM the previous day. So we stopped at a TA in Rawlins, a tiny place in Wyoming. When we pulled in, we saw a cute dog running around by himself. He appeared to be pretty scared. We tried to get his attention and get him to come to us, but he kept on running. Kara tried to throw some bread his way and it made him flinch. I went into one of the stores and let the guy behind the register know. He said the dog had been there for a couple of weeks at that point and that the dog catcher can never successfully get him. He also said that the dog is nowhere to be found during the daytime. It was so sad. I just wanted to rescue the poor thing. But there was nothing we could do.

Elvis went to sleep and we decided to loiter around the truck stop for the entire night until he woke up. There really wasn't anywhere for us to sleep. We were asked by someone, "Are you coming from a Gathering?!" I do not like the idea of being mistaken for hippies. We went to one of the rooms designated for truckers to hang out and clean their clothes and saw a woman who had to be no younger than her forties standing around with a Hatchetgirl tattoo on her leg. We sat in the little room for an entire episode of Family Guy and then decided it probably would go well if we tried to sleep in there. So we just sat around and stayed up. It was really boring and felt like an eternity. We bought some fig bars to eat for the time being. We watched the sun rise over the silhouette of the mountains surrounding us. We decided to pay $20 to eat from the diner's buffet and only were able to eat hash brown and potatoes (leading me to come up with the Triple Tater, which would be seasons potatoes mixed with hash brown and French fries, OR two of those on top of mashed potatoes). Sometimes, being vegan on the road kinda sucks.

We went outside just to get some air and admire the foreign landscape that was around us. It was just incredible. Everywhere we turned, it was continuously flat, with large green hills faded and appearing almost two-dimensional like a Hollywood backdrop against the clear, blue sky. Sitting in the shade by some drums of something and dumpsters, I saw one of those Truckers Chapels that I'd heard about but had never seen. I needed to take a picture. Halfway over to it, I ran into Elvis. He was a bit groggy, but told us where his truck was at and told us to go get ready to head out. It was about 9 when we finally head out. I talked to him for just a bit and took in the beauty that was all around us. I wanted so bad to sleep, but for the first thirty or forty minutes, I couldn't take my eyes off of the vast fields of beautiful simplicity and nothingness. Towns, businesses, gas were all separated by upwards of a hundred miles at a time. In the distance, we could see antelope. Rickety wooden fences were haphazardly put into the dry fields around us with scary looking birds perched on them like a cliche desert setting. After sitting there in awe of landscapes we New Yorkers had never seen before outside of television sets, we went into the back and fell asleep for just about the rest of the four-hour ride. When we 2 rolled around, we were finally entering Salt Lake City. Up ahead, we could see snow-capped mountains, something Kara and I had only seen while hitchhiking through the Catskills. When we stepped out of his truck and into the parking lot of the Flying J he brought us to, it was like taking our first steps onto a new planet in a cheesy sci-fi film, where there are multicolored mountains in the distance and three moons in the sky. We went inside and ate at Denny's, then used their free Wifi to figure out the wheres, the whats, and the whens. Cowboys were still everywhere.

Truckers need gods, too.

The scenery in Wyoming.

Salt Lake City. What sucks is that no camera can really capture the enormousness of it all.

Later, when we left, we got a hundred bucks out of the ATM and got directions to downtown from a nice guy working the register who enthusiastically told us about the local trains. When we went outside, we saw two pigeons together, soaking up the shade of the roof over the gas pumps outside. It was so odd seeing them there, since cars were obviously in and out. One of them was perched right down, resting, while the other seemed to stand around them as if they were guarding the other. We moved toward them a little closer and they started walking away. We just wanted to make sure they were okay. But it looked as though they were just trying to cool off. Eventually, they both moved with each other and sat down next to each other. It was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen.

We also had to see two travelers across the way, sitting in the shade of a tree on the other side of the parking lot with, of course, a poor dog they had drug along with them. We wanted nothing to do with them, but one waved to us. I waved back and turned away. One of them came up to us and asked us where we were headed. I quickly said, "Here," and tried to walk away from their attempt at finding a podium to compare scorecards with us. Obnoxious traveler youths like them usually just want to brag about where they've been and what they've done. And since they had a dog with them, they were automatically on our shit list. Without us even asking, she started telling us where they were headed. We escaped and made sure to avoid eye contact with them the rest of the way out. We walked a mile into town to find the UTA Trax system which would take us downtown. It was hot out, but walking felt good after an entire week of idle time in Cheyenne. The streets were designed in a really confusing way, in a pattern of numbers and seemingly contradictory cardinal directions (ex: South 200 East and North 900 West).

When we finally found the train stop, we watched a rail service cop harass two foreigner kids about using the same pass for a single ride. A guy with his little daughter sat next to him as he stood and lectured them while writing a citation or something, pointed at the leather gloves sticking out of his back pocket, and muttered the word "douchebag" with a chuckle and a disgusted shake of the head. It was pretty funny. We overheard a kid talking about the Hellogoodbye show, so I asked him where it was happening since I knew they had been touring with Fake Problems. We decided we'd get off at the stop he did for the show and go to it. We got off in a downtown area that had a huge outdoor mall on a road called Rio Grande. On the ride there, we saw more mountains and even the legendary Mormon church that stood tall like a fucking castle and had a golden statue of what's-his-name standing proudly on top of one of the points. The mall was huge and had a series of escalators up to the second floor. Strung across the walkway were Christmas lights and little things spraying a mist of cool water on everyone. There were lots of your average, lame chains of stores, but it was still set up really cool. It was all outdoors, which was something we'd never seen before. We went upstairs and tried to find a place with Wifi so we could figure out where we were exactly and where the show was. But first, I had to stop in a Hot Topic to try and shoplift Adventure Time underwear for Kara. Unfortunately, they had to go in the back to get them, so there was really no way to nab them. So I paid for them instead, along with a pack of cute socks with smiley hotdogs and burgers and soda bottles. I just love buying stuff for Kara. She's so easily pleased as it is that when you go above and beyond for her it looks like she's celebrating Christmas and about to pee her pants.

Unfortunately, Fake Problems was no longer on the tour with Hellogoodbye, so we ditched those plans and decided on pizza and relaxation after a long night of less than four hours of sleep. We walked a mile through downtown to a pizza place called Este for dinner. We got an 18" vegan pizza, half of it with vegan meatball. The people cooking in the back looked like they hopped a freight to work, they were so dirty and punk, but they also were spinning and tossing dough like fucking pizza ninjas. When it finally came out, it looked great. It was thin and the crust was a little too hollow, but everything else was perfect. We finished the entire thing while there. After we finished and were about to get going, the guy working the register and orders came up to us and put down a big bowl of their zeppoles, which are vegan sugared doughnut holes, with a side of agave nectar. He said, "These are for you! I know you'll love 'em! And that is not honey!" We were amazed. Once again, the pizza angels were watching over us. We ate them up and they were unbelievable. Kara asked him, "What did we do to deserve that?!" and he said, "I just had a feeling." He also went out of his way to help us figure out our way to the Front Runner train to Layton. Chris Eugene called me, as usual, and I talked to him for a bit outside.

So, in a weird turn of events, my friend from Connecticut, who I met in Ithaca, recently discovered who his biological family is (he was put up for adoption as a baby). He had an investigator try to track them down with only one clue: An old picture of his mother, father, and two siblings with their first names written on the back. From there, they somehow found them, in Salt Lake City. All Greg had previously known about them was that they had put him up for adoption and were originally from Ogden, Utah. He mentioned Kara and I to his biological sister, Christa (who he still has not met as I type this), and she said to him that we could crash at her place while we were in town. Just like that. So we called her and she told us to get a hold of her when we were done with our day. At the pizza place, she told us there had been a change of plans and that she now had to dogsit for her father at his place, which was north in a small town called Layton. We would have to take the Front Runner train there. She texted me confusing directions, but we did find the place. Luckily, we made it through the several blocks of bros and skanks strutting from bar to club to bar to club and caught one of the last trains there. They apparently don't check to see if anyone has paid for the ride, which was cool, and it was comfy and air conditioned on there. It was an incredibly fancy train ride for a local transit sort of deal.

Before I continue with this, you should get up to date by checking out the Kickstarter page for Greg's little project. Video footage was taken of his first contact with his biological family and it was decided a moving documentary would be made of his journey to Utah to finally meet them. They are currently trying to raise $2,000 for travel and productions costs. You can see the video on the Kickstarter page. It'll give you chills.

When we got off at the stop, Christa and her fiance Cole were waiting for us. We piled in next to their kiddie car seat (we had no idea they had a baby) and drove to Greg's biological father's house for the night. They were both really nice. Greg had originally thought his birth parents were Mormons, so we expected some upper-class religious fanatics to pick us up. We were pleasantly surprised with who we met. They brought us to a small apartment in a moderately nice, quiet neighborhood, and we were introduced to a tiny pitbull puppy mutt named Jaxson who was one of the cutest dogs I'd ever seen. They laid out some padding for us on the ground, briefly talked to us a little, answered some questions I had about Greg's adoption story, and then went to sleep. The puppy went to sleep in a little cat house and plopped out of it halfway through the night. The idea that we were meeting Greg's family before him was really weird. I knew we were in good company when I saw this bumper sticker on the fridge...

We woke up continuously throughout the morning due to Jaxson going fucking crazy on our asses. He chewed on whatever body parts of ours were visible with his sharp little teeth, walked all over our faces, and even started pulling my hair with his mouth. We ended up having to cocoon ourselves completely in the blanket to find safety. He was cute, but goddamn, he was annoying while we were trying to get some much needed sleep. The next morning, I ended up giving up when Jaxson pulled down a tiny thing of water off of the table and onto my side of the blanket, all over my leg. Then I stepped in some of his pee on the kitchen floor.

I ate a PB&J and drank several of their cans of Pepsi in the fridge. Cole had a twelve-hour shift for the day with the military. He had already been deployed to Iraq before and was enlisted solely for the benefit of free college. Christa was a full-time stay-at-home mommy now. We didn't know she was twenty-seven because she still looked pretty young. When her father came home with his girlfriend from a motorcycle trip four hours away, we were once again surprised. He was a biker, but not a crackhead, and a totally nice guy who practically inducted us into his family. He asked us to join him on the front lawn under the shade of the umbrella and we got acquainted. He liked nu-metal and was really excited about meeting Greg. He showed me the views he took pictures of while on his short trip and asked us questions about our travels. He thought it was so fucking awesome that we were doing what we were doing. The sun was baking us pretty hard, even under the protection of the huge umbrella over us. Of course, they took it like champs, but Kara, Christa, and I were pretty weak about it. After a while of chillin' out with him, his friends whose names we never officially got, and his girlfriend, we went inside to try and relax and I attempted to start writing this entry, which was easily distracted by conversations with Christa who happens to have a lot of things in common with me. I noticed that they use the word "frickin'" a lot, but they claim it's a Utah thing.

Kara and I donated $25 to Greg's Kickstarter. The whole story just really moved us, as did how hospitable they were being to us. They were cooking out and we were eventually forced into turning down cheese. We tried to just leave it at the fact that we were lactose intolerant, but then Greg's dad's girlfriend came out with it: "Are you guys vegan?" We were stunned that she even knew the word, just as stunned as we were when Kelly used it. We admitted we were vegan and everyone was perfectly fine and respectful about it. "Oh, yeah, my sister's vegan!" and Greg's dad even told us about a delicious veggie burger he ate while in San Francisco. I guess veganism is just more accepted towards the west or something and we need to come out of our vegan shells a bit. Christ's baby was just like any other baby, visibly. All babies pretty much look the same. But their little toddler was actually quiet. Kara noted, "I've never met a baby who was less annoying than something." This kid didn't cry, yell, or really make much of any noise other than the blibbering of his lips with his index finger, which he found fascinating. We spent the entire day there and they made us feel like we too were biological family members they were just meeting. Talking about the military and whatnot with Cole once he came home was great, too. I'm always interested in hearing people associated with things I have strong opinions about; it offers me more insight into it. He's a really funny guy and dorks out about literally everything you talk about with him, which is something I can more than relate to. When we finally got going, we drove a half hour back to Salt Lake City to their apartment, which is paid for by the military. Cole showed me his terabyte filled with movies, which he alphabetized and categorize by genre. Their place was small and cute. We all wanted to eat at Red Robin, but got there fifteen minutes after they closed at 9. We were all starving and it totally sucked. But Sundays have very little businesses open due to it being a heavily Mormon state of people who take their stupid religion very seriously.

We ended up at Chili's, which Kara and I had never visited. Luckily, they actually had a vegan blackbean burger and some delicious appetizer of guacamole and chips. It was delicious. We sat across from an entire table of bike cops. When we got back home, Christa went to bed and Cole went out to drink with some buddies. The view from their block, which is uphill from the heart of the city, was amazing. Below, we could see the city, all the dots of light sparkling like if the night sky had fallen to the streets. Kara and I watched Hustle and Flow while I tried to start writing this thing. I really like Christa and Cole. They're funny, intelligent, and can talk about nearly anything. More than that, they're incredibly open-minded and accepting, and curious rather than judgmental. I'm glad we met them. Greg's a lucky kid to not only have two families now, but to have one of them be these people.