70W
Michael Morrison
We woke up hung over in Kansas. We had spent the night in Kevin’s Ford Escort, parked at the dead-end of some new housing development. It was the second day of our road trip and just a little after sunrise. We pulled back onto Interstate 70, headed west.
Kevin had emailed me two weeks before asking if I had any plans for Spring Break. “I don’t know what I am looking for, but I believe it is West.” Kevin is an old roommate from college and we still see each other a lot. Our plans never coalesced into anything beyond the idea that West was good, better than East. All we knew was that we needed some movement in our lives.
A word about road trips… Driving by car is absolutely the best way to travel. It has every element you could wish for when trying to get away from home. Planes are faster, but they don’t feel fast. Once up in the air, you might as well be sitting in your living room instead of screaming through the atmosphere at 600 mph. When you are going 70 mph in an Escort, you can feel the speed, which is crucial. In seat 3A, you can’t decide to stop in weird-sounding little towns you see along the way. Control is a necessary element of road trips, because sometimes you just don’t know where you want to be until you get there. And since you can’t eat pretzels or other snacks while driving a motorcycle, you need a car. You also need an atlas, and a strong need to go somewhere far away.
Driving across Kansas you lose all sense of distance. Kevin and I would play the game of guessing how far away a grain silo or radio tower was. We’d guess about 1 maybe 2 miles, only for it to turn out to be more like 4 or 5. Kansas is flat and the sky dominates the landscape. It is empty, with few trees or buildings to break the monotony of soy and corn fields. But we were happy because it didn’t look like Ohio anymore. Kansas is long too; driving at breakneck speed stopping only for gas, hours and hours are still required to cross the state line.
Eastern Colorado is also flat. We began to feel bored and depressed, until the horizon got a little dark. Slowly we realized those were mountains ahead, the Front Range of the Rockies. We pulled into Denver right after watching the sun set behind the peaks. It felt good to see something new.
After walking around the Statehouse we realized we had no idea what to do in Denver. Plus it was only 7 PM. There was time to keep driving, so we pulled the atlas out again. West of Denver, there is very little until Salt Lake City, so we looked north and south. I was pretty sure that the University of Wyoming was in Laramie, and didn’t look too far away from Denver. Plus, Wyoming had a certain appeal to it. It sounded rugged.
Two hours later we were driving up 287, a twisting, curving road that climbs a mountain on its way to Laramie. It was night, but there was a full moon illuminating the landscape, casting dramatic shadows around the massive boulders that littered the ground. Then it started to snow. It snowed so hard, Kevin had trouble seeing the road as it skirted along cliffs. We drove up the mountain in a snowstorm blaring Led Zeppelin on the radio. It was fantastic. It wasn’t Ohio.
Laramie is an interesting town surrounded by mountains. Interstate 80 runs right past it and several railroads intersect. It is a quintessential western town. Men wear cowboy hats without irony. Every third pickup truck has a dog riding in the bed.
The college also has a presence. Here you end up with a downtown that has stores which sell saddles and lasso rope right next to a yoga center. Laramie is also where Mathew Shepard was tied to a fence, beaten, and left to die—as a visitor you can’t get away from that memory. It is always in the back your mind whispering to you. In that regard Laramie is in the company of other towns like Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, Waco, Texas, and Littleton, Colorado. Towns which are known by most Americans for a single horrific incident. The kind of towns that people flinch a little when they hear the name. It’s not fair, but it happens.
It was still snowing and occasionally sleeting when we pulled into Laramie. If we slept in the car we would freeze. We decided we needed to meet someone, and “work it” so that they would invite us to crash at their place; this seemed like the only way to avoid hypothermia. The day before, we had decided that we needed to meet at least one person everywhere we went and have a real conversation with them. So trying to crash at someone’s place felt like the next level of our little test.
After driving around, we found a bar across the street from campus. In the parking lot we honed our story, knowing we’d have to make a good impression. We needed to look cool, confident, and not at all creepy; otherwise no one would be crazy enough to let us crash on their couch. Strangely, we wouldn’t make the connection between Matthew and our efforts to get “picked up” until the next morning. We didn’t talk about it much, it made us uncomfortable, and we had to psych ourselves up because we were pretty terrified at this prospect. We are not the kind of guys who make friends in bars. We are the kind of guys you see sitting in the corner, probably having an interesting conversation, and putting decent songs on the jukebox. But we are not the guys who come over and talk to you, and ask if maybe, we could sorta, stay at your place for the night.
There was a small crowd inside for a Monday night, and it was a nice place; it reminded us of our favorite bar. We sat at the bar and scoped out potential marks. We thought the story of two guys bravely traversing this great country would sound good, but we didn’t know how to start. We sat there for an hour just cursing our cowardice under our breath, not talking to anyone. Then some people started playing pool and we saw an opening. We put our quarters on the edge of the table and waited for our turn. Soon we were playing against two sorority sisters. They didn’t recognize us, and asked if we went to Wyoming. Perfect. Why no actually, we didn’t, we were in fact, on a road trip. “So why are you guys in Laramie?” “Cause it’s just a little further than Denver,” said Kevin, who apparently had turned into a badass for the evening. “Oh my God, you guys have to meet Jonas, he’ll love this.”
The girls introduced us to Jonas Dickson; a rather short guy, 22, with shaggy hair. “So you guys are just travelin’. I love that man, I love that. You guys are so free.” Jonas kinda talked as if he was from California instead of Rock Springs, Wyoming. It didn’t fit. We got to talking with Jonas and he really was impressed with what we were doing. He said he always wanted to just drive and “see what’s out there, ya know?” We knew. That’s why we were in Laramie on a Monday. It was getting a little late, so Kevin and I decided to up our game. We made some not so subtle references to sleeping in the car. “Boy it sure is going to be cold.” Stuff like that, which would have been embarrassingly obvious if anybody had been sober. And Jonas, the kind hearted fellow he was, seemed horrified. “Man, you guys are crashing at my place. You don’t need to be sleeping in any car.”
We bought Jonas some orange beer, the least we could do. Orange beer is a delicacy that exists only on the left hand side of the Mississippi River. Order a Miller Light, PBR, or Bud, and tell the bartender to make it orange, and he or she will then pour several ounces of orange juice into your otherwise perfectly good beer. We saw them in Kansas, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska. No one could believe we had never heard of them. You can also make it red and add tomato juice. Surprisingly, it’s so delicious that we drank them the entire trip. Sadly, we are yet to make it catch on back east.
So we left the bar with Jonas, having made several new friends. In the car following his SUV the two blocks to his apartment, I looked over at Kevin. “He could kill us you know.” “Yeeeah, but we could kill him too, for all he knows.” We realized this was insane, and laughed idiotically. But it was really cold out, and Jonas didn’t seem like a serial killer. Inside his apartment Jonas scrambled up some eggs for us; our first meal in over 12 hours. He showed us his place, his extensive movie collection, his nunchucks, and most importantly his couch. Kevin and I rock, paper, scissored for it. I won.
“Either of you guys smoke?” Jonas asked. And he held his fingers up to his lips in the universal sign for smoking pot, explaining the California accent. We didn’t want to be rude to our host, but neither of us smoke. He didn’t mind and soon was lighting up while he and I talked about life. Kevin was passed out on the floor. Jonas was going to graduate in a few months and move to New York City. He wanted to act on Broadway. He was a talker. We watched a terrible movie on basic cable and before I knew it, it was 3:00. Jonas got up to go to the bathroom, and Kevin’s eyes popped open, “Man is he ever going to go to sleep?” “Bastard, you’ve been faking?” “Kind of, thanks for taking one for the team,” and he shut his eyes again. Over an hour later Jonas finally shuffled off to bed, but not before wishing us luck on the rest of our journey. I passed out immediately.
We woke up early that morning, decided not to use the offered shower, and wrote Jonas a short note. We left without waking him to say goodbye like he had asked us. Days later, we would send him a postcard from the Gateway Arch.
We stopped at a rest area outside of town, the highest point on Interstate 80. We brushed our teeth, washed our faces, and after putting on clean shirts, felt refreshed and ready for the day. We sprinted across the parking lot to test our lungs in the oxygen-starved air. We stopped when black spots bloomed in front of our eyes. From an overlook, we could still see Laramie spread below us. We stood there for a moment, staring out at the now white mountains and the black scratch of the interstate. We felt triumphant, the sky was endlessly blue, and we were in Wyoming, but it was time to move on.