. Posted at 9:03 pm on September 28th, 2005
I know that you know that I know how happy all you guys are that I only took 17 pictures this trip. Well, trip might be a bit of a mis-label. “Denver and back in 72 hours” is a bit more accurate. Being the adventurous sort I am, I swung up to Des Monies, then shot across Nebraska, mostly because I’ve never seen Des Monies, Iowa: A) any town my buddy Iowa (I think I’ve explained this before, but his real name is Greg. I just call him Iowa because I think it’s cool. It’s probably not.) is from has to be worth checking out and B) Jack Kerouac wrote in On The Road that “the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Monies,” which certainly doesn’t discourage me.
Alas, the only girls I saw in DMI were a bunch of teenie-bopper wanna-be groupies (which cannot be representative of the population). This is because I basically grabbed an A&W burger and some gas and pressed on. I was out of the city limits twenty minutes after I entered them. This depresses me but not too much: that Iowa guy (J/K!!!!!!! LOL!!!!) promised me that some long weekend we’d breeze on up there and see Des Monies as it was meant to be seen. Maybe even this weekend, if he’s not to offended by this writeup. DMI is one city I could spend more time in.
Like I said, I left Kirksville and drove north, towards Canada and Freedom. When I hit Des Monies I swerved left. About halfway through Nebraska the sun set and there was this fantastic thunder storm that was lightning up everywhere and making these huge explosion sounds. The simulated sound of heavy artillery, combined with the Red Bull knockoff (Red Thunder; the logo makes me think “Shazam!”) I was chugging, reminded me of the big Superman vs. Capt. Marvel brawl in Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come. If you know what I’m talking about, don’t admit it.
I took a short cat-nap just outside of Omaha, slapped myself awake and drove straight through to Denver, arriving around 4AM. I only mention this because it sets up this next sentence. Crossing the Colorado border at 3AM in rainy weather with Supertramp blaring on the stereo makes for a thoroughly bizarre experience.
After another short cat-nap in my grandfolks house it was ocho o’clock. And since my Pa picked up my sister (she’s a Frosh at a University in the same Utah-city I was born in) on his way to 38th state to join the Union, we kicked off our day with a big old brekky. It was a pretty busy day; we worked on my truck a bit, hit the farmer’s market, wandered up to the hippie-college-town that is Boulder and managed to squeeze in a few hours with menien Onkel and Tante, too. A quick side-note about that very same Uncle and Aunt. They own a sod farm. I was tyring to relate this to someone in Australia once and I said “grass” instead of “sod” and then spent the next ten minutes explaining that it has absolutely no connection to marijuana.
But before I knew it I was up bright and early for some more drivin’. I drive a Big Truck that just screams (A)’merican! I maybe would have liked something a bit smaller but it’s in great shape, so I’m not about to complain. It’s got two big tanks that can slurp up 32 gallons, total, giving me a range of about 500 miles. And boy howdy do use it. It’s hell on my kidneys, but I get all 500 in before I pull over. I’ve really embraced my truck, especially after doing Macho jobs with it all summer. And how macho is it to wake up, drive across 3/4 Colorado, all of Kansas and 95% of Missouri, crash for five hours, wake up and run a couple miles with the Ranger Challenge? Very macho, that’s how macho.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I stopped off outside Kansas City to see an old Trumaner. Kelsey’s super-cool; she’s from Plattsburg, MO (pop: 2,000) and proud of it. She transferred out of Truman last year, which is something I can respect without appreciating. Not to drone on and on, but she turned a dreary pit stop into two hours of more-or-less non-stop smiling. And it being post-Kansas just made it even more cool, because Kansas sucks. Kansas is full of corn and flat as a griddle-cake – the highest point in the state is a freeway overpass. Driving through Kansas is purgatory. I honestly considered motoring through it at night, just so I wouldn’t have to look at it. In conclusion, I hope our paths cross again sometime in the near future and hope she hopes the same hope (LOL!!!!!!!!). And that about ends it.
Fenton
http://fento.ath.cx/photos/2005/3_fall/denver/index.html