After a bonus night with Stacey and a day spent hanging out with Bryan, my old roommate, after she went to work, I get the call from Rod that the RV will be ready soon and we’re going to have to pull an all-nighter to get to Boulder on time for the soundcheck. Apparently, when “someone” ran out of gas back in the West Texas desert, it caused a malfunction in the fuel injector and now that has been replaced and we’re good to go.
The situation is eerily similar to our first-ever tour for Boo-boo in 1987 when the Dodge van that we bought for $600 the week before dropped its transmission on the way to our DC show. We missed our gig in Columbus, OH because of that, and ended up having to drive non-stop from Bordentown, NJ to Wichita, KS in 24 hours to play at a Vietnamese disco. The drive ahead of us tonight is almost exactly the same distance, just in the opposite direction. It’s about 5 pm as we get on 90 and head east towards Idaho.
When you grow up somewhat isolated in population-dense Massachusetts, you get a vision in your head about what more wide-open places like Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming are like. They seem like foreign countries, full of gun-toting survivalists, religious cults, and serial killers, and you wouldn’t want to be forced to, say, drive across all three states at night in a vehicle with a questionable service record. It was a similar feeling to the first time we drove through the deep south at night and we all imagined that every car driving behind us was full of Klan members and drunken sheriffs’ deputies. I was a North-easterner with a lot of strange and misguided impressions of the country that I lived in! Having now spent time in all of these places, I can tell you that they’re beautiful places, with lovely people, and the number of survivalists, cultists, and murderers is only slightly above the national average.
I spent the entire drive freaked out, and only left the truck once, at a late-night stop for some fast food. Inside I encountered a family that fit every stereotype I held; scary parents in camouflage and unruly kids with mohawk haircuts and slingshots. I scampered back to the Tioga and went back to sleep.
Tomorrow: Rocky Mountain High
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