is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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I Am Not A Civilian.
Recently, when I spent the day with David Lowery, driving down to San Jose for a festival played by Camper Van Beethoven, he said to me at some point: �Just face it, Jill. You will never be a civilian.� I think he said this when he learned that after a long time of not dating at all I had recently been on dates with two musicians. What he meant is that I�ll never stop knowing people who sometimes make me help unload their musical equipment. Ha. But I think he also meant that I�ll never have a typical life, whatever that means. Or maybe he meant that I'll always end up choosing to be around artist-types or the like. Still seems fine with me. Anyway, in Salt Lake City a rather loud group of musicians had the room next to Evany and I. They sucked! I mean, maybe they were a great band, who knows, but they were loud loud LOUD late into the night as if hotels weren�t for sleeping. We both had earplugs but we resented having to use them at an establishment that makes you pay for a place to sleep.
In the morning when I went to the front desk to check out and get my receipt, I shared the elevator with one of the band-guys. The scene was like one of the elevator scenes from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. We�re standing there silently, and the guy starts to speak and then doesn�t say something to me, two times. (Harold says to his elevator-girl, finally, as she stands there with her luggage: �You�ve got a lot of baggage.� Ha.) Anyway, I get to the desk, not with the guy or anything, alone, and the woman at the desk says to me: �oh, are you with the band?�
(So somehow I am marked outwardly as not-a-civilian? Strangers can see it? No, I�m sure it�s that I have short black hair with weird blonde streaks in it. And it's Salt Lake City. But still.)
But forget about Salt Lake City. Tonight I am in Casper, WY. Once we got into town Evany was on fire to go find a bar and get a drink. It�s Sunday night, and nothing seemed to be open, and we were about to give up when we noticed that a liquor store seemed to have a bar in the back room. I was a bit hesitant to go into a weird little liquor store in the middle of Wyoming where people get killed for being gay, and then just sit down and drink some liquor with the locals. But we did it. It was funnish. We drank Budweiser. We choked on cigarette smoke. We left right when the semi-toothless guy down the bar from us seemed about to make conversation. Now we are in our hotel room and that movie is on wherein Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant. Really.
We stopped in Cody, WY for lunch today, and I had a VERY GOOD piece of cherry pie. The restaurant was FULL of the heads of dead animals, stuffed and hung for decoration. The walls were all dark wood paneling, and there was a little doorbell in the wall of our booth. Evany asked the waitress what it was for, and the waitress leaned in close and whispered that it used to be for call girls. Evany yelled, �CALL GIRLS? You mean real call girls?! They worked here?!� Etc. The waitress still seemed to like us after that.
Oh, and this morning we saw Old Faithful erupt. It was pretty cool! It spewed meningitis water all over the place, way up into the air!
(Apparently if you get the water from the geothermal attractions in any of your holes it can give you spinal meningitis or legionnaires disease. Evany read this in the Yellowstone bulletin and has been slightly obsessed with it ever since. Apparently no one really reads the bulletin because all these parents were letting their kids put their hands in the water as it rolled off toward the benches.) On the way out of the park, a BISON walked right up to the car, and I took its close-up.
Evany and I have developed an unconscious stress-sharing system where we take turns sleeping well and having mind-racing stress nights. Tonight I won�t be sleeping well, if the schedule holds.
Tomorrow we�re off to the Badlands for another night without telephone, and, most likely, without cell or wireless coverage... But it will be beautiful, and in the meantime we will see the Black Hills, Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument, and a whole lot of amazing terrain in the Badlands. Then we�re in O�Neill, Nebraska? So who knows about the cell coverage. I know that one or two people have left me phone messages but so far I have not been able to retrieve them. I do, however, get emails about once a day in some sort of mysterious moment of connectivity. It is making Evany mad, because her sidekick is not getting the same frequency of coverage. So� we�ll see you in Dubuque?
PS--Evany bought me a stuffed-animal bison! I almost bought it last night but then decided to think about it first. Then, this morning when she came back with her coffee, she was looking in her purse, which seemed very full for some reason, and she said, "hey, how did THIS get in here?!" and she pulled out Buffy the Bison! Un-bear-ably sweet, no?
Stats:
Canyon Village, Yellowstone, WY to Casper, WY (Population 49,000; Elevation approx 6500)
Miles: 389
Lodging: $85 (We could have had cheaper lodging in Casper, but we wanted a bathtub instead of a shower, and we wanted the possibility of room service, etc. So we�re at Holiday Inn Express.)
10:34 p.m. - August 29, 2004
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