obscure question...

Didn't EPMD reference this guy:

sorry for the blurry photos but i though some of you would like to see that.

Cheyenne, Wyoming.

oh so pretty.

How do you know if you are at gay karaoke in larmie wyoming?

difficult... the usual signs are blurry
for example:
men wearing cowboys hats:
common in wyoming.
tight fitting jeans and snap button shirts:
common in wyoming.
cowboy boots:
common in wyoming.
a general atmosphere of machismo and male dominance:
common in wyoming.
a certain underlying feeling of homoeroticism:
common in wyoming.
groups of men who fit all of the above and are singing YMCA by the village people...
hmmm...

Silas, Hazel, Adam, and Danielle...

thanks bunches.

yous are the bestest thing about wyoming!

Can dick cheney control the weather?

Yes.
Beautiful day.
East on rt. 220.
Sun all day.
A subtle tail wind too.
Make a right and south on rt. 487,
just shy of casper wy.
Wind turns and follows me.
Lovely.
Just lovely.
A nondescript wyoming road with another nondescript wyoming road intersecting on the right.
cheney
reads the mailbox.
I wonder...
No,
couldn't be.

Wind picks up,
sky begins to darken.
Sun is swallowed by storm clouds that rose from no where.
Wind whips around and blows dead on.
Stronger...
Stronger ...
Stronger...
Storm clouds start cruising in from the west.
Bolts of lightning strike the ridge to me right
Thunder.
Rain.
Driving rain.
Ominous clouds begin to form directly above.
The lightening grows so bad that i abandon ship and seek refuge in the ditch.
How close is too close when it comes to lightening,
i wonder.
cheney you bastard.

prairie dogs are quite small you know

wyoming is a ford truck commercial,
a rodeo,
a cattle drive.
Wyoming is the west,
was the west,
but no one told them the west was won,
and it wasn't all that great,
so everyone moved to phoenix.
wyoming has its own thing going on
and is damned proud of it.
what that thing is i'm not sure...
but i know it when i see it.

Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain.

our paths were bound to diverge.

at a cross roads in wyoming kurt and i said good bye.

we got good and drunk the night before.

we stayed in a hotel

and

pillaged it for everything complimentary.

we told stories.

we told jokes.

we ate multiple times at the complimentary breakfast buffet.

we changed my chain

kurt gave me pointers.

then it was time to go.

a picture!

i said

we'll use the back of that truck as a tri pod!

I have a tripod, kurt said

no....

this will be fine.

first one... no good.

second... a failure.

HEY!

What are you doing near my truck!

uh,

nothing,

gurgle gurgle....

using it as a tripod.

So long Kurt...

Thanks a brazillion.

See you next time around.

whynotoming

wyoming

utah, get me two

Special agent Utah! This is not some job, flipping burgers at the local drive-in! Yes! - your surf board bothers me! Yes! - your approach to this whole damn case bothers me! And yes! - YOU BOTHER ME! And Pappas! Oh, for the love of Christ. How the hell did I even let you talk me into this whole bone-headed idea to begin with

canyonlands

Ten million years ago the Colorado Plateau was thrust upwards from an ancient sea. Since then wind, rain and time have conspired to shape it...

Ten million years.

10,000,000.

Longer then all of our hopes and dreams.

Longer then all of our triumphs and sorrows.

Longer then the history of every state that has ever existed.

Longer then their greatest accomplishments.

Longer then their most magnificent defeats.

Ten million years...

Longer than man has walked on this planet.

We are all nanoseconds,

go do something with yours.

Addendum

Every time I take a pee in the canyon lands I feel I have played some small part in the ten million year old work of vandalism.

creative destruction.

fly over country

You begin to see the signs for the Moki dugaway from seven miles out if you are traveling north, from thirty if you are coming south. We had seen it on the map, speculated a bit, and decided we would go find out what a Moki dugaway was.

We had arrived in Mexican Hat that morning, found the river, found a fellow traveler named Jay and made for some swimming and bathing. We showed Jay how to wash clothes with sand. Jay shared his maps and some thelonius monk with us. Jay said he would miss us, but he was heading towards monument valley in the morning and we were going for the dugaway.

Moki dugaway 7 miles,

Gravel Road

10% Grade with switchbacks

Travel not advised for RVs, trucks longer then 25 ft., autos pulling loads

Use extreme caution

It took a few miles before i noticed...

Slow but steady and then it struck like a hammer...

nothing.

no cars.

no trucks.

no sounds.

no nothing.

for seven miles...

nothing.

Nothing for as far as the eye could see in any direction.

Nothing for as far as the ears could hear.

The dull, deafening roar of complete silence.

It enveloped us like a thick winter coat on a cold winters day.

nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

So much nothing it overwhelmed.

We rode on after awhile, up the dugaway (a gravel switch back), out along a high plateau, in absolute stillness.

Just us and the road.

That night I fell asleep next to the dying embers of a juniper fire under a blanket of stars so thick it hurt my eyes. I counted the satellites racing overhead and marveled at the plans flying over to someplace else. I could count on one hand how many people were within fifty miles.

Food

Do you eat?
asks my mother.
Are you eating enough?
asks my father.

Yes,

yet...
I pass cows along the side of the road and dream of jumping on their backs and taking a bite out of them. I pass sheep and tell them how delicious they all look and how I would love to eat them all. Every town we come into we try and spy a BBQ where we could cook big hunks of meat over and the dollar is no longer our measured currency. Everything is talked about in terms of pork steak and donuts.

"Tour de Rez"

South east out of Page, Arizona,

the heart of the Navajo Nation.
Tough road.

Lots of wind blowing in the wrong direction.

Lots of forty bottles littering the roadway.

8$ a pop from the bootlegger.

Kaibito...

tough town.

reminds me of so many others...

fat kids and skinny dogs.

not much to eat...

not much to do...

yet,

more people smiling and asking where we're going...

more people joking and asking what we think of "the rez"...

more people wishing us well,

safe journey,

have good time.

Life can be peculiar in that way.

Damn Dam

First they built the dam.
Then they flooded the canyons and called it a lake.
Then they grew themselves a town.
Then the rains stopped falling,
the lake started dropping,
and the desert started to grow itself a canyon again.
Now what will they do with that town they grew out in the middle of the desert?
For the time being they got a good thing going in the comedic sense...

Dam Police,

Dam High School,

Dam Church,

...