It's not a joint problem. Problems in the hip present with pain in the front, or (in the case of bursitis) in the side. Pain where mine is, in the buttockal region, isn't even clinically considered "hip" pain at all, but rather lower back pain. He also ruled out any disk issues, and said he was fairly certain it wasn't any kind of sciatica since the pain doesn't radiate into the leg at all and stays concentrated in the one spot.

His theory is that it's a deep muscle injury that never healed properly, though he's not ruling out influence from the lower back proper. I'm on twice-a-day prescription anti-inflammatories for at least the next two weeks, along with some exercises to go with them. We'll see how those go and then evaluate.

If it responds well to rest, NSAIDs, and gentle exercise, he sees no reason why I can't still run 7 miles in a few weeks if I'm feeling up to it.

I check into CNN's Election Center page daily just to see what's new (most days, nothing really). Down below the polling data, there's a section headed "More Features". And the links there have been the same ever since Obama clinched the nomination:

More Features

* Who will Obama pick as VP?
* Who will be McCain's running mate?
* Elections 101: Party conventions and more
* Map: Race for campaign financing
* Map: National and state polling
* Political Market: Start trading now!
* Candidate profiles: McCain | Obama

I find the wording on those first two rather intriguing. Technically, both of these men are picking running mates, Vice Presidential candidates. Calling one pick the VP and the other a running mate is really a distinction that can only be made on November 5. Whoever posted that language is essentially planting the seed that whomever Obama chooses is going to be elected. Whoever McCain chooses will forever just be a running mate, a bit of presidential campaign trivia.

I tend to think that accusations of overt liberal bias, particularly in large corporate media in this day and age, are pretty bogus. But this is a pretty obvious case, and something the folks at CNN want to be careful about. No need to give the guys at Fox News ammunition that actually has some bite to it.

I've mentioned the intermittent hip pain thing in previous journals regarding this year's training. Mostly it's been an annoyance. An annoyance that was annoying enough that I was planning on having a doctor check things out after I'd run the race in three weeks. I'd sort of resigned myself to having a poor showing at Falmouth this year. Training has been awful this summer, and I haven't been able to get into a good rhythm of runs.

Now I'm worried that I might not even be able to run at all.

I ran on Friday, a quickie just to get some miles under my belt before movie night, and then was unable to go the rest of the weekend or Monday due to a packed schedule. I almost went yesterday, but the heat made me decide to give it one more day. So I took it easy yesterday evening and then headed up to The Red Derby to celebrate Scott's birthday with some friends and some excellent beer. A good time was had by all, but as I was getting out of my seat, a sudden pain shot through my hip. Standing still outside while we had our final conversation it subsided to a dull background thing, but when I bent over to unlock my bike I felt like I was going to fall over it hurt so bad. I biked home, wincing all the way, and laid down on the couch. Basically the only thing that doesn't cause active pain is lying out straight. Anything that involves bending in the middle (sitting, walking, picking something up) was painful. I took a 600mg ibuprofen which essentially did nothing. I'm staying in bed or on the couch today where I can stay laid out, and seeing the doctor in the morning (the earliest appointment they could give me if I didn't want to declare it an emergency).

Fear #1: That they won't be able to figure out what's wrong, and therefore will only be able to treat the symptoms rather than the cause. This has been around in a muted form for the better part of a year now, and if they can't treat it, I'll have to live with it.

Fear #2, which I realize is silly: That I won't be able to run Falmouth. But fuck that. I've been out there for the past eight years. I'll be there Aug. 10.

Swedish Roulette:

A game of chance undertaken in the self-serve warehouse section of flat-pack self-assembly furniture stores, to wit, Ikea, when faced with a stack of boxes each containing a duplicate of the furniture item that one has come to the store to purchase. The object of the game is to select the box(es), using only one's intuition and gut, that are not marred by missing or defective pieces.

I played four rounds of Swedish Roulette on Saturday at the Ikea up in College Park. Sadly, I was only successful in three of them.

Gas prices being what they are, they should really have to compensate customers who are forced to make a return trip due to their putting all the assembly holes in a shelf a half inch away from their intended position, thereby rendering it useless.

I think Christopher Nolan has made a grave error. Based on this mugshot of Andy Dick following his arrest for drug possession and sexual assault (pulling down a 17-year-old girl's shirt & bra) last night, I think it's pretty clear that this dude would have made a far creepier Joker than Heath Ledger. Seriously, this picture is going to give me nightmares. It's like he's auditioning for a Stanley Kubrick-directed remake of Silence of the Lambs.

Scott, Eric, and I ventured to Chinatown last night for a screening of Hellboy II, which was exactly the slice of dark eye candy mixed with smart-alecky humor I was hoping for. We arrived early to grab dinner at my favorite Chinatown hole-in-the-wall, Chinatown Express (seriously, if you're in the area and want something quick and cheap, go for it; it's not much to look at, but they make their noodles fresh in the front window, and they're tasty, filling, and did I mention CHEAP?). As we got out of the car, parked a couple of blocks away in front of the National Building Museum, I noticed a homeless man rather unceremoniously slumped in a semi-fetal position on their spacious front lawn. I didn't think much of it (D.C. will do that to you), and we went about our evening in the sad slice of the homogenized future that is the revitalized, sanitized D.C. Chinatown.

Three hours later, we returned to the car and I noticed our sleepy friend still lying in the same position on the lawn, and the acid taste of witnessing an unfolding tragedy bloomed in my mouth. Maybe it was just having watched a film with a horrifyingly rendered depiction of the Angel of Death in it. We sat in the car, and I was as far as having my seatbelt on, stealing glances out the window trying to detect movement, when I noticed Eric looking in the same direction as well.

"Are you looking at the guy on the lawn?" I asked.

He wasn't, but then we all took a good look.

"I'm not imagining it, he was right there when we went in, right?"

"Should we poke him?"

I disengaged the seatbelt and got back out of the car. Eric and Scott followed. We all three stood on the sidewalk, about 10 yards away, and stared intently. I kept as still as I possibly could, focusing on his chest and a bit of clover in the lawn just beyond him. The line of his striped shirt shifted, just barely, obscuring part of the clover. I tried from a different angle, just to be sure. Definitely breathing. I think we all breathed a sigh of relief and went back to the car; I looked back at one point, and the man shifted the position of his arms, confirming his liveliness.

Eric commented as we drove away that had we not gotten out, and had it turned out that he was dead, there would almost certainly have been a camera somewhere that recorded the sequence of events, and it would have become one of those "look how callous we've become as a society" news pieces, where they'd show the footage of not only dozens of people walking past a dead body, but also a carful of three guys getting out mere yards away, and then returning hours later and driving off without a second glance.

Which raises the question: are we really growing more callous as a society, or is it just that there are now cameras in public places to record the callousness that has always been there?

Labor Day weekend, 1993. Just before the start of the fall semester of my sophomore year, my then-girlfriend and I made a trip out to Rehoboth Beach. This was, of course, before she realized that she preferred the company of the fairer sex. My grandparents had a beach house at Rehoboth. Had for years. There's a large chunk of memory devoted to my childhood wanderings of Rehoboth. From the days when I was young enough to be put in a child seat on the back of a bicycle while my mom pedaled us around the then-quiet beach town. As I recall, on one such ride she lost her wallet, which had been wedged between my hip and the side of the seat. I'm fairly certain I didn't throw it overboard.

But on that weekend in 1993, we enjoyed ourselves and then left, and I went about the business of the school year, never for a moment thinking that it might be a decade and a half until I would make it back. I kept meaning to go, and from time to time would make tentative plans to make the brief drive out there, but something always came up. During that time, the little cottage on the edge of Henlopen Acres underwent a full makeover, as did much of Rehoboth. Angel accompanied me for my long-delayed return this past weekend.

The first thing I noticed was the scent. I don't know how many different beaches I've been to in those 15 years, but there's still something subtly different about Rehoboth that struck me the moment I stepped from the car under the tall pines at the house, and as we crested the dunes down at the beach later in the afternoon. Some deep sense memory perked up with every intake of breath.

And so it went for much of the rest of the weekend, nostalgia trip after nostalgia trip. Angel and I spent two nights walking around the boardwalk. Which, predictably, seemed much smaller than it had when I was a child. Back in those days, my aunt Kathy and I would walk nearly every day from the house down to the boardwalk, and all the way down towards the Funland at the southern end. It seemed to take forever for my little legs, but it was always worth it when that big clown face that adorned the tower at the corner of the Funland building came into view. They've since removed the clown, but Funland is still alive and well. Along the way, the smells of saltwater taffy, boardwalk fries, Grotto pizza, and cotton candy would swirl together in the nose. Now the walk seems like a breeze, the boardwalk over far too quickly.

As much as has changed in Rehoboth, the new hotels, the sparkly new businesses and restaurants and houses, the boardwalk is much as the eight-year-old me remembers it. Comfortingly so. The first night we get dropped off after dinner at the main entrance of the walk, about midway down, where the bandstand is, where Dolle's saltwater taffy sits (as it has since long before I was born). The images printing themselves on my retinas largely line up with those in my memories, and as we walk on the boards I notice the things that look the same more than the new additions (which include grassy dunes between the walk and the beach and many more Grotto Pizza locations). In fact, as I catch snippets of overheard conversations, it seems suddenly incongruous in this environment to hear words like "iPod" or "MySpace". After all, last time I was here, those things didn't even exist.

Funland is mostly unchanged as well. I'm disappointed to find that there is no longer a spin art booth as there used to be. But the shooting gallery is still there (though moved and a little smaller), as are all the kiddie rides I used to love, the little cars, boats, and spaceships, all of which move around in their tiny circles, horns, bells, and guns honking, clanging, and buzzing. I comment to Angel that no one would let someone build a ride like the spaceship ride anymore, where the kids are provided fake ray guns mounted on their ships that they point at their fellow kids and fire. There are the bumper cars, which have been updated so that they no longer draw their power from a ceiling grid, with the poles rising from the back of the cards and dragging across and throwing blue sparks from the contact points. Skeeball is as addictive as ever, and before long Angel and I have accumulated a couple of pink stingrays and a white seal for our skeeball prowess.

The big nostalgia pieces we save for the second night. First up is the rooftop mini golf. This has changed quite a bit, as it used to be known as "Old Pro" mini golf, but has since been bought and completely redone. This is mildly disappointing, but we still have a good time. We pick up a large ball of sickly sweet cotton candy on the way to Funland. It's so sticky they hand out moist towelettes with it. We purchase some ride tickets and head directly for the main attraction: the Haunted Mansion, one of that generation of haunted house rides that has its own society of devotees. As it turns out after doing some research, I've been going to the Haunted Mansion nearly as long as it's been in operation. And 15 years later, it doesn't fail to give me a grin from ear to ear. And all for just $1.50 and a half hour of waiting in line. After this, we hop on the carousel for a ride (Angel hasn't been on one for years herself), and then I leave my extra tickets on a countertop for some lucky kid to find. Before we leave, I want to try my hand at a game of skill, so I line up at the horse racing game, which involves rolling a ball up an incline to try to drop it in one of a number of holes. Depending on which hole it drops into, your horse will move more or less along the track. In the first game, I do well, but am in third or fourth position when someone else wins. I decide to put a second dollar down and try just one more time. And wouldn't you know it, I beat 11 other people and Angel had her choice of a white or black racing pony to take home. She went for black. I was elated, having never won such a game previously. Walking back, we hit a photo booth, as we found an arcade that had old-fashioned booths rather than the sparkling new digital ones. If my picture doesn't come to me following a chemical bath, it's not a real photo booth, sorry. And, though we'd already had a full dinner earlier, I was compelled (again, by that demanding inner child) to grab a slice of Grotto pizza, since it was as big a part of my childhood memories of this place as spin art and the Haunted Mansion.

Of course, this was the beach, so we spent plenty of time out on the sand during the days as well. I managed to keep up with the sunblock well enough to avoid a burn even with three straight days spent out under the sun, which I'm calling a personal victory. The big news on the beach was Bertha. You know, that hurricane that's way down in Bermuda. Turns out, even something that far away can have a big impact up this far north. The waves were bigger than I've ever seen on a mid-Atlantic beach, and the lifeguards had their hands full with those foolish enough to go out farther than knee-high in the rough surf. I went out and dived into the big waves, and while I didn't require any assistance, I did get wiped out a couple of times and sustained a couple of nasty scrapes on my arm and my foot. More eye-popping than just the big waves though, was the huge canal that formed two thirds of the way up the beach: at high tide the big waves rushed up over the hump of the sand that led down to the shoreline and down into the dip between there and the dunes. As afternoon moved on, beachgoers were forced to move their chairs and towels and umbrellas farther and farther back as the water advanced, until the waves were filling up the canals that ran from jetty to jetty, a knee-deep kiddie pool for the young'uns to play in.

And that was my return to Rehoboth. I'm not waiting another 15 for my next trip.


Pictures here (sorry, I forgot to bring the camera to the boardwalk, so these are just of the beach and the house)

Two today:

A young woman was killed just a few blocks from my office when a garbage truck ran over her while she was on her way to work on her bike. As a longtime bike commuter myself, I've wanted to say something about this, but was having trouble corralling the various emotions I was having in relation to it. Yesterday I went to a press conference being given by the local biking association at which they also dedicted a ghost bike at the corner. I did a writeup of the event.

and

Popcorn & Candy: Monsters & Muppets & Alan Alda! Oh, my!

Oh, I think maybe so.




No matter how many times I watch this, I crack up every time. The look on that cat's face is priceless. Not to mention when he puts the one paw down on the bottom of the pool.

I completely forgot to link to this last week. That's what happens when you're in the early throes of a lazy four-day weekend.

Popcorn & Candy: Your Time is Gonna Come

Weekends like this, it becomes quite clear to me that I need to hurry up and become indepently wealthy already. Sure, vacations are fun. But four straight days off of work where you can just hang out at home and do things with friends is a taste of life without the daily grind. Far more rejuvenating, and just as necessary as "getting away".

Here's how things shaped up:

• Wednesday - After work, Scott and Eric and I took a little road trip up to PA for the kinds of fireworks you can't get in DC/VA/MD. Which is to say, the good ones. We came away with about $300 worth of incendiary devices, and only had to drive less than an hour and a half to get there, right across the PA border south of Gettysburg. We had so much time we stopped at a little roadside Irish restaurant near Thurmont, MD, where I had a Guiness/Harp black & tan and an order of fish and chips that provided me with the biggest piece of haddock I've ever seen.


• Thursday - While I had the day off, I couldn't sleep in since the workmen who were doing the last bits of work on the central air installation didn't have the same luxury that I did. So I sat on the couch and flipped channels while they worked and then grabbed a nap after they were done. Did the Popcorn & Candy in the afternoon after waking up, then set to recreating the 2007 July 4th pasta salad for 2008 (with pretty good success), and then prepared for that night's rooftop movie night. We had another pretty good turnout to see Road House. Plus, not only did some random people stop to watch what we were up to for a few minutes and comment what a great idea it was, but one girl who had seen us up there doing Ghostbusters last year asked if she could be invited to future screenings. We'll soon have the most popular semi-secret rooftop movie night in town. We're taking over; first the Dorchester, then the world! Perhaps once Scott and I get our first movie made, we should have the premiere up there.


• Friday - Sleeping in is bliss. After waking up, I lazed around on the couch with my better half for a while, and saw that Jaws was on AMC. I'm pretty much incapable of passing this movie by when it's on TV, and it was near the beginning, so I watched it. Went on about a 5.5 mile run, after which I showered and we gathered up all our things to head over to Scott's for the July 4 festivities, picking up Alex & Jo along the way. The party was excellent, a ton of food, and then as soon as it got dark enough we started sending our fireworks skyward. We ended up getting some really good stuff, and there were lots of oohs and aahs and applause from the assembled partiers, as well as some of the neighbors. More eating, drinking, hanging out, and some MarioKart to conclude the night (along with watching the rest of the neighborhood fireworks in Petworth, which continued well past 1am in all directions) and then it was back home around 1:30am.


• Saturday - More blissful sleeping in. After we got up, Angel headed out to a yoga class and I stayed in and I decided to catch up on some unwatched Herzog and threw on Cobra Verde. Excellent overall, though Herzog jets impatiently through his exposition to get to the story. Still, Klaus Kinski is a force of nature onscreen. You simply can't take your eyes off of his fiery insanity. After that, it was down to Richmond to catch Denali live and in concert in their reunion. I was never much into them, but liked what I'd heard enough to make the trip. Which was well worth it. The show was excellent, as was the venue, which had seating in the balcony; good news for people who were doing four hours of round trip driving to get there who didn't feel like standing through the show. There were minor annoyances, like eating at a McDonalds in the VCU Medical Center Hospital food court, since there is NOTHING within reasonable walking distance of The National in downtown Richmond. And downtown Richmond is a wasteland on the weekend. It was a Saturday evening at 7:30, and not only were there hardly any people walking around, but there was nothing open at all. Not even the few shops on Broad Street. I was hoping Richmond had become less of a shithole since I'd gone there in high school, but that doesn't look to be the case. Anyway, it was a nice road trip, and we pulled back in at home around 2:30 and sank happily into bed.


• Sunday - Super mega sleeping in this morning, since we got in so late the night before (and it took a while for me to get to sleep; I was tired, but I was also fueled by an English Toffee cappuchino from WaWa that I'd gotten to keep me going for the drive). Once we finally got out of bed a little after noon, we sauntered over to La Fourchette for some artery clogging eggs benedict. From there, a little trip to the local record shop, where Angel perused the clothing while I flipped through the vinyl, finally picking up used copies of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, The Clash's Black Market Clash, and 3's Dark Days Coming. Back at home, we attempted to digest our heavy brunch quickly so that we could go to the free yoga class in Malcolm X Park that they do every Sunday in the summer. Which was good, though I often feel a little disoriented in non-Bikram classes since I do them so rarely. There was a little rain during class, but we stuck it out, only to have the skies open up violently within 60 seconds of the end of class. So we got soaked on the short walk back home, which was kind of nice since we needed to shower anyway. Showers accomplished, we hopped in the car to head up to Silver Spring and see a screening of Bonnie and Clyde, which is one of those movies I'm supposed to have seen that I've never gotten around to. It was great to be able to see it for the first time on the big screen at the AFI. Brilliant all around. We grabbed some hummus and rice for dinner afterwards, and I put off going to bed in an effort not to have the weekend end.


And that's it. We got a LOT done, yet I still feel like I spent a lot of time just hanging out and being lazy. Not bad when you can get that much accomplished and still feel lazy.

Fans of Elliott Smith, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Muppets, rejoice: for this video clip lies at the crossroads of those three fandoms.

Warning: not for those who might be unnerved by graphic suggestions of muppet suicide.

So there's a knock on the door shortly after Angel leaves this morning, and I know immediately it's the work crew. I haven't had my shower yet, but I decide to let them in anyway just to see what they're doing. If I can still take a shower while they're doing whatever, I'm fine with that. I'll probably just call in and go in a little late. I open the door, and it's the painter, here to add a second coat to some trim work he had been there to do on Thursday, painting these metal panels that cover the air intake for the central air.

I let him in, and it's a quick 15 minute job and he's back out of there. I've already called to say I'll be late, so I'm sort of dawdling around when Phoebe comes waltzing in and sits down. She sits there for a few minutes, and then lies down on her side, and the side of her that was facing away from me before is now facing up. And I notice that there's a lot more white on her than there normally is, and in a place where she's normally just black.

Apparently, she decided to rub up against the freshly painted wall immediately after the guy left. Fantastic.

Luckily, it just so happens that we have pet clippers now. So in a reversal of the usual roles, Phoebe was carried into the bathroom with me while Chan sat outside, and I sheared off the hair that was covered in paint. Luckily she's rather more submissive about stuff like that, and didn't struggle for more than about 5 seconds, and then just laid there while I held her neck and clipped away.

Stupid cat.

Am finally getting back into the swing of regular running. I got out there 3 out of 7 days last week, and was out for 3 straight days Saturday-Monday. And today is yoga. I'll whip myself into shape for Falmouth yet.

And the knee has been quite good. I still notice a little tightness, but I honestly think I'd be fine running without the brace, which I may drop next week. What's been more problematic is the hip pain that first presented itself after the marathon last year, which is now back. I'm not sure what it is. It seems to high up to be bursitis according to most things I've read, but there's no accompanying leg pain, which would point to sciatica. It's nothing to write home about, though apparently something to write in here about. Still, it's annoying and does slow me down.

After reading up on both conditions in a few forums yesterday I took the advice I read somewhere and downed a couple of Advil before running. If it is inflammation related, that would take care of not only the pain, but the source of the pain, at least for a little while. And it worked like a charm and I had the most comfortable run I've had in weeks. Still, though, I hate to think I have to drug myself, even just with Advil, just to go out and run five miles. If it continues to be an issue through the race, I'll see a doctor for a real diagnosis and a more permanent solution later in the summer. Especially if I plan to marathon again, since taking NSAIDs is a big no-no before major endurance races.

This week's music agenda for DC.

and

A review of Mission of Burma's blistering show at the Black Cat Saturday night. One of the best shows I've been to in a while.

May 14, 2008

Devil's Tower, WY to Moville, IA, 643.6 miles. Total miles travelled: 2844.6

---

Day 7 is a long day. In order to take our Devil's Tower detour, we had to leave ourselves a good 120+ miles short of our intended Day 6 destination, near Mount Rushmore. We added a healthy distance to what was to already be a long drive all the way across South Dakota and into Iowa. Not that we were thinking about the long second half of the day. The first half promised a trifecta of National Park Service sights: one National Monument, one National Memorial, and one National Park.

First up, the monument: the much talked about Devil's Tower. It's location is fairly remote to any major travelling routes, so it has given rise to no cottage tourist industries, unless one counts the handful of campsites in teh picturesque rolling green hills that surround it. Yet the detour and extra effort to get there were well worth it. The seclusion of the Tower works to its advantage, and the quiet and solitude of the rock formation, it's grooved sides rising up improbably from nowhere, allows it to retain the feeling of a sacred spot, as it was held by the natives of the area before western settlers happened upon it.

We hiked the trail all the way around the base, surrounded by the massive boulders that fell away as the Tower revealed itself eons ago. In the presence of a thing unspeakably old, yet surrounded by the detritous of its violent birth. A humbling one-two punch.

Less humbling, but far cuter, was the sight that greeted us as we drove away from Devil's Tower: Prairie Dog Town. Not far from the foot of the tower a vast field stretches away from the road that on first look seems fairly normal. But on closer look, one realizes that the field is dotted with dozens and dozens of little mounds and holes, and scurrying around between them, a host of prairie dogs. Sitting upright and keeping watch, wrestling with each other playfully, eating grass, or just hanging out.

On the road again, the weather began to get dreary, clouds and drizle as we went further up into the Black Hills towards Mount Rushmore, crossing over into South Dakota. We took a few wrong turns trying to navigate a back way in, and after a drive through the prospecting town turned gaudy tourist trap of Deadwood (skip the visit, you'll get more enjoyment out of the HBO series), we finaly got going the right way. Which was towards the even more gaudy tourist trap of Mount Rushmore. It seems fitting that before becoming a National Memorial, the project that became Mount Rushmore was originally cooked up to lure people to the Black Hills, to make a tourist destination out of an area that people had little reason to visit otherwise. Fitting because all around the attraction are legions of discount hotels, chincy gift shops and overprice family dining, all bearing bright red white and blue. Neon. Flashing lights. The faces on the monument suddenly come into view around a bend, and one really feels they seem smaller than they should, sadly dwarfed by the commerce down here.

Not that milking tourists for money stops once you get closer to the mountain. Inexplicably, the park service has decided to contract out the parking for Mount Rushmore, which amounts to a great big "fuck you" to National Park members who paid for the pricey pass that grants unlimited admission to all NPS attractions. Yet here at Rushmore even those people have to fork over $10 to park. Angel and I decided that we hadn't planned on spending much time on this spot anyway, plus it was raining lightly, so we drove a little farther past the parking, stopped to watch some mountain goats cross the road (not indigenous; like the carved faces, they're an artificial feature brought here to heighten the tourist experience), and turned around at a turnout within sight of Washington's profile. We got out for a couple of obligatory pictures and headed away.

On the interstate, we had our first encounter with the law just outside Rapid City, a South Dakota state trooper who claims he saw Angel drift over the white line as we headed toward a construction zone. Neither of us remember said drift, but after escorting her back to his cruiser to question her and make sure that she wasn't drunk (in early afternoon??), he wrote her a warning and sent us on our way. No harm done.

From here, on to the Badlands. This was one of the destinations I'd most been looking forward to. The desolate beauty of the pictures appealed to me (plus who can resist a place with a name like that?). But before we got there, we started noticing something odd along I-90. Dotting the side of the road were tiny billboards, dozens of them, advertising something coming up called "Wall Drug". What was Wall Drug? If the signs were to be believed, Wall Drug was everything to all people. Whatever you wanted, it appeared that Wall Drug had it. Need film for your camera? Wall Drug has it. Wood carvings? Those too. Free ice water? Yup. Free coffee and a donut for veterans? Wall Drug's the place. Pie. A genuine mining experience. A saloon. Tourist info. Fast food. Western wear. A new T-Rex for the kids. A shooting gallery. Black Hills gold. You want it, Wall Drug has it. Long driving day or not, we were obligated to stop.

Make no mistake, Wall Drug is a tourist trap. The best comparison for all the east-coasters reading is that it's something like the South of the Border for the upper plains. Only maybe marginally less ostentatiously gaudy. And what a gloriously trashy bit of tourist trappy nirvana it is. "But Ian," you may be saying, "Weren't you just complaining not two paragraphs ago about Mount Rushmore being a tourist trap?" Why yes, I was. See, Wall Drug, like South of the Border, comes by their status honestly. There's never any mistaking what they are. They're attractions in the middle of nowhere that exist purely to take money out of your pocket. And if you don't see that from the first billboard on the highway, you probably deserve to get parted with as much cash as they can milk out of you. The surroundings of Rushmore on the other hand trade on patriotism, nationalism, and money-grubbing disguised as love for God and country. "If you love America," they say under the watchful eyes of George, Thomas, Theodore and Abraham, you'll buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Wall Drug may be a prostitute. But Mount Rushmore something far more insidious: a gold-digger, and not the kind with a pick and shovel. At least with the former, you know what you're getting into. And so we enjoyed the not-so-classy wares that Wall Drug had to offer, picking up a few trinkets, including a Christmas Tree ornament featuring the South Dakota triumverate of Rushmore, the Badlands, and, of course, Wall Drug. We didn't get any pie, which the signs had made Angel rather hungry for, but more than enjoyed our brief stay. And parking? It was free. Take that Mount Rushmore.

We got back off the highway to take the Badlands Loop road, which drops away from the interstate to cut a path through the eastern end of the park, bypassing about 17 miles worth of interstate in favor of a 30+ mile leisurely ride through the most amazing landscape that I've ever seen in these United States. Vast grasslands suddenly drop away to reveal a dry landscape of striated gullies, hills, and hoodoos (a word which is new to me, meaning a rocky spire that rises from the bottom of a badland or a basin). It's almost impossible not to stop at every turnout to stare placidly out at what nature has created here, an unearthly landscape that stretches out to the horizons in some directions, and is punctuated by soft dusky grasslands that jut out into the clay canyons here and there with the occasional lonesome tree quietly marking the boundaries. The road starts at a higher elevation, mostly looking out over grand vistas, before descending down into the gullies, twisting in and among the hills and spires. I could have spent all day there.

But this day was for travel, 640 miles of it, so when we reached the border of the park, it was time to make some time. We'd started early that morning, and it was now well into the afternoon, and we'd barely covered a third of our needed miles for the day. So we kept to the speedy interstate to get through the rest of South Dakota, the long straight line of I-90 to Sioux Falls, then south on I-29 towards Sioux City, Iowa. Along the way, our only real stop was in the little town of Presho, SD, about halfway across the state, for a dinner of country fried steak in a little diner attached to a Kiwanis club hall. A bunch of old codgers who'd just been doing some volunteer work on the road ambled in halfway through our dinner and took their places next door, where I have no doubt they spent much of the rest of the evening. Angel again had to do without pie, as we were to full from diner for dessert. The rest of the day was spent speeding across the state, crossing over into Iowa a little while after 11.

At this point, we were exhausted. We'd just spent a good 15+ hours traveling, including all the stops along the way, and we were road weary as well as road-dirty: the campsite back at Devil's Tower was the first we'd stayed at without shower facilities, and we were feeling pretty grimy and beaten down. As we passed through Sioux City, we kept our eye out for roadside motels. But, as had been the story back in Boise, the only lodging near the interstate in major cities were the corporate hotel chains. Plus, Sioux City was gone in the blink of an eye, and we found ourselves back on our old friend, Route 20, driving through the dark night in western Iowa, no idea where we were going to stay. At this point a motel or a campsite would do, but we were seeing neither. We were, in fact, seeing absolutely nothing at all; I assume there were probably darkened cornfields on either side of us. As Angel scanned the map, we decided that if there wasn't anything in the next town, Moville, that we'd turn back and find somewhere in Sioux City. Because after Moville, the map was essentially empty for a long, long way.

Fortune smiled upon us, though, in the form of the Motel 20, a low row of rooms right along the road as we entered Moville. We stopped, rang the bell at the office, and were greeted by a very non-Norman Bates-ish character, who got us a room, gave us a key, and sent us off to bed. There was one more surprise in store, though. Angel went in first, while I was still unloading the car, and came out and told me I had to come in and see the room. Was it a nightmare, I wondered?

Only if you're a Pepsi person, it turned out. The whole room was done in a Coca-Cola theme. The whole room. Coca-Cola pillows on the bed. A large framed picture of the Coca-Cola polar bear in the Calvin Klein underwear ad parody they did a few years back. More than a half a dozen other Coca-Cola polar bear pictures above the bed. Coca-Cola aluminum drink tray on top of the Coca-Cola placemat. Another similar placemat on the other side of the room with a Coca-Cola tiffany lamp on top. A Coca-Cola telephone that was only for show, as there was no dial tone in the receiver, and a real phone was on the desk right below it. And, of course, a Coca-Cola faceplate on the light switch. Even the ceiling fan was red, and the curtains black. The commitment to detail was impressive.

I had a shower and we relaxed in bed and watched the Daily Show, getting our first taste of the news in a week, and fell into a blissfully deep sleep. Surrounded by Coca-Cola memoribilia.

May 14, 2008

Thoughts On Our Transport

Our car, the bright red Chevy HHR, had less than 6000 miles on it when we picked it up. I'm betting it had never been far outside the northern California area. It probably spent the last four to six months as a standard airport rental car, ferrying travelers from the airport to business meetings, conferences, conventions, or tourist destinations. Haight-Ashbury. Chinatown. Golden Gate. And here it sat, 2200 miles into our trip, a little over halfway, and it had spent the night pointed towards Devil's Tower as the great rock slowly disappeared into the night and came back into view as it greeted the dawn.

When we return the HHR in a few days, it will likely go back to being that standard airport rental car again. From National Airport around DC, to monuments & memorials, the convention center, Crystal City and back again. I wish we could leave some message for subsequent renters to let them know how this car came to be with them. How it drove alongside bison ans saw the sun rise in the face of Devil's Tower, and sat at the foot of ash cones at Craters of the Moon and at the top of Crater Lake amid 15-foot snow drifts.

This car has secrets. It will never tell.

After reading some of the reviews out for WALL·E, I actually find myself more eager to see this than pretty much anything else that's come out so far this year. Which seems like a weird thing to say about a Disney flick, but 1) it's Pixar, and Ratatouille really was pretty amazing, 2) they're saying it's the darkest Disney movie since Pinocchio, so score one there, 3) it's a post-apocalyptic tale, which attacts me almost as much as it does my better half, 4) there's reportedly pretty much no dialog for the first 40 minutes; quiet and meditatively visual, like an animated 2001; and 5) the NY Times review actually talked about parallels to Herzog's recent themes regarding the unsustainability of human life on earth in Encounters at the End of the World, which I saw, loved, and reviewed last week.

All of which is pretty heady stuff for a G-rated film ostensibly made for the too-short-to-ride-a-roller-coaster set that has action figures and fast food marketing crossovers. It's a crazy world, this one.