1689 miles traveled

People have accents just like in the movie “Fargo”! People have accents just like in “Fargo”!!! It’s so adorable! I just want to hug everybody. [insert offensive inaccurate fargo accent here] “Oh, Comere yoo adorable leettle northerner you.”

I’m writing this from the student union at North Dakota State University. We just met a student we both have a huge crush on. Honestly, this is a pretty cool school. Friendly, laid back, and fairly diverse. Although, I’m reminded of one thing while here. I’m writing this next part as an open letter to all college students everywhere;

Alcohol is not a defining characteristic.

Wearing a tee shirt that proclaims your undying devotion to beer is not a statement. It doesn’t make you different. It doesn’t make you more adult. It’s so pervasive as to be the opposite of edgy, and it doesn’t
tell us anything about you.

Jeeze. Come on.

Oh, and sex. We know you like sex, you’re college students. Honestly, we get it. I love sex too; it’s in my list of top 3 favorite things ever.

But tee shirts that invite women to have sex with you…'' well,

A.) They’re not really all that funny
B.) They’re not clever, seriously, they’re not
C.) They don’t work.

As a matter of fact, I think they decrease your chances of getting laid by 67% (and frankly the chances
are already dangerously low, given your personality.)

Admit it. You’re really wearing that, “Got Lei’d in Hawaii” shirt to impress other guys, right? To prove your heterosexuality. Make sure no one thinks you’re, gasp! gay.

Come here, you need a big hug too. Yes, there there, you’re going to grow up to be a big strong man.

Sorry. Went on a bit of a rant there.

Anyway, after this we’re heading over to Jamestown, which means more driving. I don’t love driving, but
at least there’s stuff to look at out here. There’s really only one word to describe the landscape.

Pretty.

It’s the major reason we're doing this again. Although it’s hard to stay focused while driving. The major highway in North Dakota is arrow straight and flat flat flat. The road is a perfect line going endlessly into the horizon. Since the truck has cruise control. Since there is very little traffic. Since there are no curves, there really isn’t much effort to driving. Our job as we drive is to

A.) Stay awake.
B.) Keep the truck between the two white lines.
C.) Continue to stay awake.

It feels surreal, like we’re keeping the truck balanced on a fence for two hours. It’s our current form of meditation, while having the stressful excitement of having the potential to kill us.

Here are some typical exits we’ve passed in North Dakota (I swear I’m not lying):

Anaconda Opportunity
No Services
Bad Route Road
Buffalo Alice
No Services
Home on the Range
No Services

Driving along, we’ve learned that the state motto for North Dakota is “North Dakota: The Roughrider State”, which is all right I guess.

Trying to find places to get food and fuel, we’ve come up with a few better ones:

North Dakota: No Services.
North Dakota: Vega-what?
North Dakota: Organic food is for Commies!

As we drive J and I have taken to reading anything we see out loud in funny voices.

“Blinsky! Hello, I am a truck. My name is Blinsky!”

This is how we pass our time. We’ve decided that fighting over the speed of the truck was beneath us. So we’ve moved on to fighting about the temperature inside to truck.

Me: “Can we turn on the air conditioning?”
J: “I’m freezing!”
Me: “What are you talking about? It’s like a thousand degrees in here!”
J: “Negative one thousand maybe.”
Me: “How did you get so crazy?”
J: “Jerkface.”

[a note to our more sensitive viewers: In reality J and I have NEVER called each other “jerkface.”

I’m making up half of this stuff, and exaggerating the other half. Just pretend you’re reading about two fake
people.]

Still, J’s also having issue with my humor these days. I dunno. It’s got something to do with my use of the phrase, “your mother.”

J: “How far is it till Fargo.”
Me: “Your mother.”
J: “What? That doesn’t even make sense.”
Me: “Your mother doesn’t even make sense.”
J: “Ahhhhhhh!”

I think J just doesn’t have my refined sense of humor.

(note to J’s mom: This is not about you. I meant it as more of an archetypal “mother,” like “The Mother Of Us All”, or “The Great Earth Mother”)

(note to “The Great Earth Mother”: please do not smite me for the “your mother” jokes, I’m just being silly. No offense.)

When we’re not driving the truck, staging mock fights, or begging the locals for vegetarian food, J and I have been writing. I’ve been writing fiction lately (apparently I’m either trying to be like J, or I’m procrastinating from writing my next album.)

Of course for J writing is the easiest thing in the world. Each day she effortlessly spins off a novel or two of ghosts who cry rainbow tears, alien races who communicate through smell, and extra dimensional creatures who highest aspiration is to merge into an eternal uni-mind.

Meanwhile, I struggle just to make my prepositions talk to my participles, whatever they are.

I don’t know why I’m even trying to write, I can barely talk. I was reading a book on dialog, and I’ve
started to observe how I, and others, talk. I’ve noticed something extremely disturbing about how I speak. I have this weird habit of ending all of my sentences with a trailing conjunction.

For example:
“I getting pretty hungry, maybe we could stop to get some food and…''
“and what?”
“What”
“You said, ‘and’”
“and what?”
“Ahhhhhhh!”

More later…

From the cab of a white moving truck – 699 miles traveled

The cab smells like cigarette smoke. We’ve sprinkled lavender leaves all over the cab. J and I are currently zipping through the forested mountains of the panhandle Idaho, in about 70 minutes we’ll be in Missoula, Montana buying hippie food. Then we go further east.

We both spent the last 4 days desperately trying to get ready for this trip. I kept myself busy primarily with packing and fretting. I like to get in a good fret or two before we hit the road. Part of the desperation was due to my long-standing policy of never preparing for any trip till the very absolute possible last minute. J ascribes to the same life philosophy. [ J note: This is a lie, plain and simple.] She has this clever technique. Every time she finishes an item on her to-do list, she adds two more items. [J note: This, however, is not a lie. It is, in fact, the cornerstone of our relationship.] These kinds of dysfunctions are the cornerstone of our relationship.

In my defense I also had to take care of lots of other stuff too. I had lots of Coop work to finish, two web clients and, oh yeah, I threw a dance party / concert out at Lost Valley Educational center.

The concert didn’t start the way I envisioned it at all. I was thinking that at the strike of 8 pm EVERY person I invited would appear at the lodge, cheering, and virtually begging for my music. I would dazzle them with my dazzling introduction, start the first track, and bask in the pulsing vibe of getting-downidness. Maybe occasionally pausing to give in to the demands of zealous groupies.

Instead, the strike of 8 pm was followed by the strike of 8:15 pm, and the deafening silence of 8:30 pm. Then my opening band started playing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have an opening band, but I did. It was a sort of improvisational group, which consisted of every child at lost valley. Most of their songs consisted of them beating arhythmically, as loud as they possibly could, on the drums lying around the lodge. Meanwhile one of them would run in circles screaming, “Stop playing! Stop! Stop!” It was all very edgy.

The only audience for this performance was the screaming children themselves, and of coarse, me. As delightful as this was, by 9 pm I told the kids that it was time to start my concert, the grown-up concert, the featured event, me. By 9:00 pm I was rocking the house, slamming my compositions of eclectic techno music into the audience of small screaming children.

Well, ok, eventually a bunch of adult type people did show up, the kids all went to bed, and I managed to keep the dance floor mostly full for the next 2 and a half hours. Wow, people dancing, to MY music, wow.

Anyway, back to now. Like I said, J an’ I are crossing Montana heading towards North Dakota. We bought some natural hippie enzyme stuff that is going to eat all the cigarette smell all bio-warfare style.

I think the truck is trying to kill us. J scolded it earlier in the trip, and it’s getting back at us by self adjusting its mirrors in un-useful ways. Within minutes of setting the side mirrors, I’ll look to see if a big semi is barreling down on us, only to see nothing but my own terrified face. Thanks truck. Yet even amongst all this stress and drama, J and I are managing to stay emotionally connected. Knock on plastic. We’ll have to see how we’re doing in a month and a half. I’m feeling confident because our communication has improved greatly since the last trip (Texas).

A typical interaction on the Texas tour (a dramatization),

J: “Ninety! You are going ninety miles per hour!”
Me: “I am not! I’m only, um, going like 88 tops.”
J: “You’re going to kill us!”
Me: “We’re in a desert! There’s nothing to even run into out here!”
J: [crying] “I should just drive for the rest of the tour”
Me: “Shut up, jerkface”

The new updated enlightened us,

J: “I am uncomfortable with the speed you are driving”
Me: “I hear you. I notice that we’re going 5 miles under the speed limit.”
J: “And yet, still I feel uncomfortable”
Me: “Ah ha! Well then let me remedy that situation with great haste.”
J: “Thank you”
Me: “You’re welcome…' …'jerkface.” [Jai note: This is the mildest dramatization you will ever read on these pages.]

We just stopped at a “Discount Food Store”. Maybe it should have been called the Ghetto Food Store. It had a bunch of beat up looking food that was at least a year old. It’s essentially like dumpster diving, except that you pay for it. I was mocking J because she said that she was “ravenous” and would “eat anything”, yet one bite into the ghetto cereal we bought, she turned up her nose and is now searching for food that is less than a year old. Wimp.

Anyway, we’re doing pretty well. That’s it for now. In two days we’ll be in Fargo North Dakota (yes, where the movie was made)

More later…'.