Week of Silence '05: Day 4

waking up at 11am in a very tightly tucked and very warm bed in the middle of vegas after having gotten over the brunt of your sickness while not talking is...notable.

so i wake up. clean of nose and in more healthful health. to all of you following these travails:

YES, i have gotten mostly healthy. this includes the coughy/scratchy/monstrous throat and the various forms of nasal hatred.

YES, my ears still pop, though not as much anymore. such is the life one leaves, when migrating the tumultuous sea levels of the western USofA.

time reports are due for work. being on the road, though, doesn't make for ease of reporting. the trick is to find a way to get online whilst on the road, fill out my time report, send it off, and continue on my merry way. that's the trick.

back to the morning. right. so i wake up. now, i have to tell you, it did cross my mind, the idea of taking a hotel towel in case i find myself lake-bathing again before i get home.

oh yes, it crossed my mind.

but from what i can tell, the boys are back in tow-ow-ow-ow-own. the boys are back in town. i can tell this mostly because the song is stuck in my head, source unknown.

breakfast. something for breakfast. a diner, for breakfast. a good, boothy, old-fashioned, buck-tooth-waitressed diner. and an omelette for breakfast. with these requirement s in hand i promptly turned around and walked to the diner next door to the hotel.

score. Coco's, the place was called. and oh so cold, the place was. the import of this decision, though, was in dining at a place that looked like it could afford at least one pair of gloves for the cook. not my kind of place, the kind that can afford things. but given how i'm in vegas and given that lord only knows what sort of new cooties are spawned hourly in this region of the world, i'll play it a littler safer today.

my server was a scant asian woman, a kind of i-ate-something-sour scowl on her face that did nothing to dampen her laid back demeanor. irony in form, i guess. i scanned the menu, looking and looking and realizing that, not only can this place afford gloves for the cooks, the fully laminated menu complete with well photographed menu items and a dash of graphic design unmistakably signaled how nice this place was in comparison.

ugh, a nice diner.

uuuuuggghhhh, a nice sunday diner, at that.

so to hell with it, i thought. i'm gonna eat wheat and starch and all the other blood sugar hiking stuff that turns me into wheezy mcweeze. i'm gonna eat every last scrap.

anyway, i found the appropriate omelette ensemble and coffee selection and pointed my heart out as she tried to comprehend the choices. let alone when i decided that, even though i was going to throw my blood sugar into a whirlwind frenzy, it wasn't gonna happen with the sugar at least. so i found the sugar-free syrup listed on the back and pointed and underlined and pointed and pointed as she squinted to try and read what the hell it was.

i practically wore a hole into the menu. laminate and everything. she squinted for five minutes, figured it out, and off she went. she comes back in five minutes with the coffee in a funny flute-y mug and a little glass of cream. that's right, a little glass. like a shot of dairy.

in the meantime i sing along with the songs on the radio playing overhead. and to the sides. and from the floor. songs and music and classic crooning from a bygone era and blah blah blah. now, is it "so let your love flow" or "so let your love go"?? i sang both versions while some random old pop song played around me, the tune in my head drowning out a song i'm sure would have gotten me bopping along if i hadn't been focused on this flow-or-go dilemma.

and the coffee comes. sweet, great, great great great great great diner coffee. i haven't had coffee in sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long, it just hits the spot so very well. the little shot glass of cream, just enough faux sugar, just the right blend of bitter and not. she plops down the coffee pot and moves on to the table behind me. i could hear the family telling a little girl to order. the waitress awww's just a little,

'whatchagonnahavehoney?'

she asks the little girl. at this point i returned to my flow-or-go fiasco, so i didn't find out what the little girl ended up having. probably pancakes or something.

then comes the food. oh, the food. hashbrowns, pancakes, sugar-free syrup and those little cubes of butter. and my omelette, my sweet sweet wonderful brilliantly crafted omelette. two minutes in and i've finished my coffee. eat eat eat swallow eat eat eat

breathe

eat eat eat. i'm eating too fast and writing too fast and looking too fast and singing too fast and fast fast fast fast BOOM. food's almost gone and coffee's long gone and songs all a blur now. and here she comes. with more coffee.

more. coffee.

time almost slows down when you're pouring a cup that really don't need to be drunk. and i guess that applies to all sorts of drinks. look over and see the waitress smiling as she hands over another straw, the oddly preppy couple here on a sunday morning in vegas watching everyone around them (too worn out from the night to be worried about making small talk), seeing the smoke rise from the cigarette in the corner and the almost flashing equations in your brain (diffusion, then osmosis, then pH balancing, then hormonal cascades, then waterfalls, then TLC, then cyclops, then odysseus, then poseidon, then water, then diffusion again...). fifteen minutes later and the cup still half full.

enough already, i say, and chug the cup. wipe my mouth, pay my bill, and off i go to arizona.

about two hours out i decide to make a pitstop; i got the idea after remembering the roomie suggesting that i visit the grand canyon since 'it's only about 100 miles off the highway.'

honestly, how can you not get all warm and fuzzy over such incredible logic? well i mean other than being sane and junk.

right. so pitstops. i felt like making it a chock-full-of-pitstops kinda return trip. and so pitstops were made.

first stop, the first suburb of vegas that i happened across. i'd have to go look up the name of the 'burb again but i don't feel like being all specific. point is, i happened across said un-named suburb and took a veering right.

that's right, veering.

so what did i do in this nameless suburban utope? firstly, i drove. drove and drove until i found a place to quench my thirst for americana.

so i'm not sure if it's a suburb-of-vegas kinda thing or a suburb-in-the-desert kinda thing, but it was a different kinda thing either way. corrugated steel houses, the kind that look like they're made within four days and can withstand a hurricane (or at least come apart in big, solid pieces). random colors, pink and blue and purple and white. lawns of sand and gravel, neighbors to an acre of sod and clearly displaced grass.

a high school for a town of maybe 1000 people. a library, a bookstore. odds and odds and the occasional end.

secondly, i stopped. right outside the cozy almost-diner with big signs announcing the availability of ice cream and various forms of sandwich. taking ten minutes to park because of the five i spent watching the ice cream man unload his wares by the back. the air conditioning inside, the second half of the diner crowded with knicknacks because it is also an ANTIQUE STORE.

******

a quick aside: the country is erupting with antique stores. so many that i'm beginning to doubt the country is anything less than 500 years old.

******

the sugar free butter pecan ice cream, the huge scoops and the juggernaut of a plastic spoon. the cashier behind the counter whose life i try to imagine, the high school girl who may only have a couple hundred other students in her entire school. working in an air conditioned diner and then leaving into the stripped desert air.

so i ate the ice cream and then left it on the table to peruse the antique store in the other half (no food allowed, you see). this close to buying the typewriter, a portable guy that was such a staple even a decade ago. almost.

instead i returned to the ice cream, finished, and moved onward to the Lost City Museum in Overton, NV, south about one town over. more driving more driving more driving, little roads and bigger roads. and then i get there.

and i liked it. i go inside and look at the entry price but can't grasp which price applies to me, so i walk up to the cashier, let her tell me what is expected, pull out the wallet and collect my change. and then onward into the museum.

how arrogant and lame and naive, how bourgeois and pretentious to say the place was amazing. it is history, simply put, propped up and dusted off to give us an idea of what it means to be alive. be human, conscious of past and future. so i'm not gonna say all that.

carved stone and sand outside, petroglyphs carried over from other sites and embedded around the museum. just so very simply nice to look at.

the pueblos have stood stolid for so long it just leaves me in a bit of a silent awe. kings of kings, ozymandias and his ilk, all gone and forgotten. and here's a hut of clay and mud that stands taller than so many other long-gone monuments. to remember some mother and father and child, nameless and unknown, of all things.

inside i bought a patch, the start of my own future log. the way i would have bought huge stickers saying 'ITALY' or 'GREECE' back in the 20's.

and then back to the highway. what a thing, to notice shadows on the mountains themselves. trailing a valley for five miles and then seeing it curve off away from you into another direction. the driving kept up until utah and Zion National Park. by now it was 4:00pm and trying to find my way to the grand canyon would not only take about two more hours, it would also be in pitch black dark in about one hour and along some dirt road after half an hour. combine random dirt road, pitch black dark, and a really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really deep canyon and you get me not going there.

so instead i head to Zion National Park. being the tourist attraction it is, i of course travel the requisite touristy shops: places that sell dream catchers and leather wares, restaurants and trailer parks, an ostrich farm and a little bar off in a corner. i told myself i would go to the bar on my way back, but soon enough i was focused on the trip itself.

i got to the park around 5:00, minutes after the place closed down and left me unable to even get a patch. no tours, no multi-colored sunset shows, no silent oggling of countryside with seniors and hippies in an overcramped bus.

but i parked the car outside the visitor center anyway and walk around. the place is closed, of course, so i figure the least i can do is use the bathroom and fill up my water bottles using the facilities outside. walking to the bathroom, it becomes very obvious very quickly that there are no lights to be found anywhere. getting to the bathroom and finding it completely dark makes one not want to plumb the depths and hope for the best. so i head back to the car.

five seconds later, the lights go on; i can see where i am now, i can see the water fountains and the bathroom and everything between. so back to the bathroom, use of the facilities, and outside. outside and looking up, the stars smiling back at me again in one of the few places i can see them untainted.

trying to find my car with almost no light is no picnic, either. i ended up turning the alarm on and off so that the headlights would flash and point me back. go technology.

back on the road, back towards the highway. i picked up some coffee and a patch at a little coffee shop/antique store/random native american crafts store. good coffee, good patch. good all around.

ten minutes and i cross the bar i had decided on earlier.

man oh man. man. take a moment, my friend, and just sit down for this bit. it is not outrageous, not incredible, just simply without retort.

the bar was a dive without the atmosphere. the bar itself on the opposite wall when i came in, about 6 or 7 older folks sitting there chatting and socializing. the bartender standing there with her hands on the bar, straight out and supporting her when she says 'hi there.'

'what'll it be?'

i look at the wall, at the older folks' hands, and all i see is beer. beer in their hands, beer on the bar, beer bottles on the wall, beer cans in the trash.

and something told me any signals to her as to wanting otherwise would just get messy for no reason. so i point to a coors light, make it clear that i can't talk, watch as she grabs one and as she pops it open.

'i'll need to see some ID.'

so i produce ID.

'illinois, huh? we got another illinoian here too, funny huh?'

she points to an older woman at the far right end of the bar. the pointee looks up at me and smiles, we tip our drinks to each other, and i take my bottle to a table.

about three minutes later another woman from the bar comes over, pen and pad of paper in hand. she sits down, takes the pen, writes on the pad of paper. and she slides the pad over to me:

'how long deaf?'

i laughed. the third time or so that someone has thought i was deaf, the third time in ten years, all three during the last four days. after i finished my chuckles i waved my hands, a quick sweep across the throat that shows that i can't talk.

'oh, you're sick or something?'

a brief nod.

'oh, see i thought you were deaf. i used to date a deaf guy, see.'

she turns and makes eye contact with those at the bar whom she left behind.

'he isn't deaf.'

'yeah, we know,' a man and the bartender reply.

'yeah i thought you were deaf. i used to date this deaf guy. i had to break up with him, though, drove me nuts after awhile. thing was whenever we went out he always kept asking about what everybody around was talking about. i mean i can barely keep up with one conversation at a time, so he sees some people laughing and wants to know what the joke was and looks in another corner and wants to know what they're saying to the waiter and all that sort of stuff. i just couldn't take it anymore!'

i laugh. she continues on. wanting to know whereabouts in chicago i live. continuing on, about how she used to live around rockford, trying to remember the way back to chicago from Zion. asking if i went to the park, if i saw the colors in the sunset, if i took a tour. asking what i do for a living, where i work, how long i'm on the trip.

i wrote down five words or so the entire time. she kept on after i handed her my business card and wrote down the word 'computers.'

'oh i've had a computer for so long. i had a commodore as my third computer, i've been around them forever.'

she continues on, the trials and tribulations of laptops and desktops, the husband's technical skills and habits, formatting and defragging and the like.

'it's so funny though, how that sort of thing works out. my oldest, he's a little older than you, doesn't know a damn thing. last year he wanted to look at this porn site,'

oh yes, reader, we've suddenly turned in that direction.

'so he tells me he needs to use his credit card to prove his age. i told him "no, don't do that, here's another site that's free" but he keeps saying that they only want it to prove his age. about a month and $700 later he finds out what really goes on. should have listened to me, right?'

oh the laughter, my friends. the laughter and the laughter and the laughter. whether she knew that i was laughing at the absurdity, whether she instead thought i was laughing at his naivete, who knows. either way, the laughter was plentiful.

we ended some time later, about an hour, hour and a half in total. she ended wanting to know if i used ICQ.

ICQ. sweet googly moogly, how awesome is that? honestly.

so i left her with my business card and her intentions to email me some time later. why? who knows. these are the sort of things that i do, i guess, so let's not dwell on them.

and so i left. onward and onward, back towards the highway. by this time i was somewhat hungry but i didn't feel like a full fledged meal. so what to do? stop by the grocery stop next door to the gas station when filling up, clearly. what to buy?

pepperoni. sliced pepperoni. pizza pepperoni. a pound of sliced pizza pepperoni.

a pound in my pack and back in the car, ready to drive and snack and keep on till morning. so that's what i did. drive and drive and drive. and i come across Southern Utah University.

you see, the plan was to stop at each college/university that i could spot from the highway, randomly roaming and seeing if any parties or craziness or any collegiate activity was brewing whilst i happened to be in the state. so, seeing the signs, i of course had to make a pitstop.

first building i found was the athletics. students working out, other students working out. a couple students manning the equipment checkout counter. walking around, though, i somehow didn't feel like writing out my intention to find a party or a bar to the kids working behind the desk. so i thought about it for a few minutes, didn't really feel up for it, and left.

more roaming campus, driving about and see what's around. there must have been some sort of event, though; one of the auditorium/gym buildings was packed, people leaving en masse right around 9pm or so as i drove around. more driving. after about half an hour i come across a bar somewhere in the town. going in, it was definitely not my place for the moment. spread out, older people there, no students or revelry. just people sitting around, maybe playing pool. just not up for it. so i left.

and the rest is history. more driving, more driving, more listening to books on tape. by the end i decided on my next pitstop in the morning, a dinosaur museum. i'm parking at a rest area across the street and sleeping until the place opens at 9am. perfectly reasonable, i think.

lesson for day 4: there's nothing wrong with learning who you are, learning what you're like, or learning what spur of the moment really means.