Monday, August 17, 2009 10:37pm

Hays, Kansas

Today we set out from Grand Junction later than expected…didn’t hear my phone alarm go off, then spent quite a while in the hotel parking lot because the birds in the tree above the car decided to unleash their bowels all over it. I swear, it was like a migratory flock of very large pigeons just arrived from Mexico and experienced “Montezuma’s Revenge” directly above my Corolla. Half of it was practically white. So I used a bottle of windex from the hotel and got a nice arm workout from scrubbing off the encrusted tirds. They should make superglue out of these damn things.

Anyway, we employed “Cecil” (our name for the GPS, since I selected the male narrator with the British accent) to get onto the 50-E through Gunnison National Park and on past Gunnison to the 24E to Pike National Forest. The views just kept getting grander and grander. At first sweeping slopes of brownish-green grass, then hills that grew higher and higher and views that spanned further and further out. Then the winding road took several more twists and turns and each one seemed to introduce a new level of beauty. There were crystalline blue lakes surrounded by green forests, reflecting the trees above and the blue sky beyond. The water was so still in places that it acted like a mirror, only magnifying the scenery above. A chipmunk darted into the road on a turn, and Martina almost swerved across the lane to avoid it; she saw it scamper back to the shoulder in her rearview mirror, and I joked about how my Facebook status that evening would be that I nearly perished so that a chipmunk might live.

As we made the climb in elevation, a brand new bag of pretzels spontaneously popped open in the back seat. I’m sure that has something to do with air pressure, all perfectly scientific, but it scared the hell out of us. And we became enamored with “Cobra Commander,” a badass on a large bike who Martina noticed while driving through the mountains. We realized after several minutes that C.C. was probably a woman, based on her frame in the small leather jacket (she was wearing a helmet). When a large truck cut her off as it pulled out of a gas station, she pumped her middle finger high in the air so he would see it, and we drove behind her giggling like kids, thrilled with the display of irreverence and fearlessness from a woman in tight leathers, towing a large platform behind her, climbing through the high altitudes, flipping off truckers, and just not giving a shit.

On we drove, past an old water mill and around turn after turn. I loved looking into the distance and seeing layers of mountains, one after the other, their distance indicated by changing shades of dark blue, purple, and grey. The music always seemed somehow apropos, even in all its variety: some of the best picks were Space Oddity and Ziggy Stardust, Mahler's 8th (a recommendation from Leon), Prince (Little Red Corvette), Blondie, and Van Morrisson.

We descended through picturesque valleys in the shadow of the mountains, full of green grass and running horses and roadside signs for whitewater rafting. I have always liked Colorado, and this time was no exception. It’s not as barren as Nevada, not as conservative as Utah. More varied, interesting, and fun. And green! Definitely more green. Towns like Gunnison and Colorado Springs looked interesting, the sort of places that wouldn’t make you panic if you had to spend more than a lunch hour there.

Well the beauty continued throughout the drive until we got to the point where the land grew progressively flatter until it seemed as though God had sheared everything off with a razor blade. We were in horse pasture country, rural east Colorado on the way to Limon and the boring interstate to Kansas, when we noticed that the sky on the horizon was becoming progressively greyer. Soon the winding road winded right towards the dark curtain on the skyline, and I immediately began regretting the fact that I had explained the characteristics of super-cell storms and tornadoes to Martina a few hours earlier. Dad and Carol called just as the downpour began, and he warned me not to drive in hail because the ice can congeal and make the road slippery. I retorted that I wasn’t about to sit around on the shoulder and wait for the ice to congeal, and I would just drive slowly through it. We resolved to look up the recommended strategy online later…and that turned out to be too late, as the hail began shortly after I hung up with dad. Martina quietly knitted but increasingly turned her eyes skyward as the hail pelted the car. Between the incredibly large rain droplets and the increasingly frequent marble-sized pellets, we followed the lead of the car in front of us and pulled over in the parking lot of a small roadside café. We sat there and I tried to make light of the situation while searching for a weather update on the radio. We heard one but then they segued into the Glen Beck program, we winced, and quickly changed the station. I accidentally came across NPR, and Martina and I actually high-fived each other because we were so excited to have something familiar in the midst of so much that was unsettling and strange. And we’re dorks, as Becky would hasten to remind us. But the NPR broadcast played a segment from an Obama speech that instantly calmed me down; it’s something about his voice.

The sunshine slowly caught up with us, and the hail melted into rain sprinkles again. Thinking we were in the clear, I pulled back onto the highway only to get inundated again just minutes later. Once again we pulled over behind the car that had pulled over once before; it had Missouri plates and I thought, “they probably know all about tornadoes.” The sky was never ominous enough to make me think we were about to experience anything like that, but there were a few scary moments when I squinted toward the grayness above and tried to decipher what I saw. It wasn’t helping that the lighting kept illuminating my peripheral vision and the thunder rumbled so loudly that it startled me. I quickly got tired of just sitting there, feeling the whole car shake every time a giant truck rumbled past us. I kept thinking about my brother and how he would be climbing the walls and out of his mind with fear at this point—he has always been deathly afraid of tornadoes. We got back on the road, and mom called. When I told her what was going on, she went online and began reading notices from the National Weather Service about severe thunderstorms in eastern Colorado…just as she said it she started to break up, and I found myself clutching the cell phone, trying to get her back, wondering what the rest of that bulletin said, soothe Martina’s doubtlessly frayed nerves (though she remained nervously quiet), and continuing to navigate the car through the hail. Thankfully I got mom back and we figured out that the storm was moving slower than us; the horizon gradually cleared and we sped on to Kansas with a wall of grey in the rearview.

The more we got into Kansas the more wheat fields and hay rolls began to dot the landscape. The fabulous 75mph speed limit lowered to 70 (minimum 40), and billboards began to spring up on both sides of the road. The only objects other than advertisements on the horizon were gas station signs—which were actually just more advertisements, with flashing red screens that screamed INTERNET! at passing drivers or (more commonly) advertised gas prices and beds with hot breakfasts for cheap prices to the tired driver. Wendy’s, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Dairy Queen, Subway. Chain stores, one after another, complete unapologetic corporatism saturating the road-side, with an occasional mom-and-pop operation that usually seemed either trite or provincial. Trite: the Tornado Bar, where they will “whip up” some drinks for you. Provincial: the Country Inn, which only included the highway turnoff, the word “nice,” and a giant Jesus fish like a Batman signal that would trigger the right reaction from those-in-the-know. I had been gunning it, 88 mph on cruise control, and just happened to slow down to operate manually and pass a few trucks when a Kansas officer pulled me over for doing 83 in a 70 zone (he had no idea how fast I had been going!).

Martina quickly hid the thing of cold cuts that had been resting on my lap, and turned off the Dr. Dre music that had been blasting. We turned on our sad-but-hopeful faces as the man came to collect my info. He explained why he had pulled me over and when I politely protested that I was trying to pass a truck, he sort of cut me off and said that I had “already passed” a truck when he clocked me (of course, there are about 50,000 goddamned trucks on the Kansas interstate, but I shut up). Martina crossed her fingers as he went back to the car to run my info., but I wasn’t hopeful. You never know what sort of effect 2 women traveling together are going to have; you’d think it would usually be positive, but my wonder-mobile is probably a lot for a Kansan P.D. to digest, with its California plates and bumper stickers and the entire back seat packed with bags. I think the “Maine or Bust” sign charms people, though; maybe gives them some sympathy for how long we still have to go. After what seemed like a very long time, he returned with a warning (no ticket!) and then became considerably warmer when Martina showed him my printout of the large Van Gogh sunflowers painting on a huge easel that Canadian artist Cameron Cross erected on the western end of the state. We had just missed it, and had to drive 8 more miles before the next turnout to go back the other direction for 11 or so miles. We thought about doing it, but given that I now had a warning on my record to stick to the speed limit, and it took forever just to reach the turnoff, I decided that I already knew what Van Gogh’s painting looked like, and didn’t want to be disappointed by a crappy view from the 70 (the actual painting is on the 24 and might have been a bit inland). It’s a shame, though; there are only 3 of them in the world and even though the artist planned to make 7, he may not get the chance.

So we pressed on, rocking out to Jon Bon Jovi (“You Give Love A Bad Name”)—best karaoke song ever, as Martina noted—and ruminating on why the water towers in Kansas look the way they do, like solid hot-air balloons. (Martina thought it had something to do with water pressure. I have no freaking clue.) We also looked out at the wheat fields and wondered what it is about this country that produces such avid religiosity, as amply displayed on roadside signs—some apparently homemade—that implored any and all passers-by to opt for “adoption, not abortion,” and an especially odd one that depicted Jesus emerging from a wheat field (just his head), holding a stalk of wheat aloft as if to demonstrate something about it to you. We decided that maybe it was the sense of confinement and limitation in a landlocked place like this; you want an escape, a release, something to believe in. So you cling to the notion that you will ascend upward when you die; you’ll go somewhere, you’ll do something, you’ll be important and in the right. It makes sense to me that so many sci-fi films about aliens and mutants center on the tall stalks of wheat and corn in middle America. They are picturesque but also ominous; what emerges from them? What do they conceal?

When we were still in Utah, Martina made a very memorable point: this might be the last time in our lives that we are both truly free. Free of the serious responsibilities and attachments that come with true (or advanced?) adulthood: husband, kids, (long-term) job, mortgage, etc., etc. I don’t know if I’ll ever have all of those things, or even half of them, but I definitely recognized the significance of her point and the fact that it was a very real possibility. So it is so critical that we enjoy this time now, and that we appreciate it. And tonight, as night fell over Kansas, she told me that she hopes we will have really good lives (I said “I think we already do,” and she agreed, but I knew her meaning); she wants us to be friends years from now, when we can turn to one another and maybe also our kids, and reminisce about the time we took that “crazy adventure” together across the country. I’d love that too.