7 July 2008: Vermillion, South Dakota

I was woken up this morning by Jason's roommate, who told me I had to leave quickly because their landlord was coming and I couldn't be there. Or something like that. I got my things together and told them that I was going to head off to Route 80, but Jason said it was too far of a walk and that they would drive me.

Now, I guess I just hadn't been paying much attention to the road when I got dropped off in Lincoln, but Jason was right-- it was over a two mile walk, and would have been an unbearable way to start the day.

Actually, it would have been an unbearable way to start an unbearable day on the road. Easily the worst one of the trip.

The day began with an hour-29 minute wait on Route 80 before Kent picked me up in a silver Ford Taurus. Kent was the adult leader or something of the University of Nebraska Campus Crusade, but he didn't spend more than five minutes talking about Jesus, which was a change from the status quo. He was all in all a really nice guy, and said he could take me as far as Omaha. Unfortunately, and he realized this, Omaha was a pretty inconvenient spot for me to be dropped off at, because it was on Route 80 but only about 30 miles from Route 29. That meant I'd still need one more ride to get to the main highway going north, which meant I'd probably need to get a ride going only east before I could even begin to go north. Kent said he would have taken me all the way to Route 29 but that he had to drop off some things at his sister's place in Omaha first. He was a nice guy, so I believe he really would have taken me farther if he could have.

As it was, he gave me a copy of "More Than a Carpenter," which apparently proves with fact and logic that Jesus Christ is the son of God. OK.

So Kent dropped me off at what he thought was the best on-ramp for catching a ride the rest of the way on Route 80, and I waited 56 minutes before Frankie picked me up in a black Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue. When I got in the car she said that she was a "professional driver" and that she could take me to Vermillion for $90. So I had ended up in a taxi. Whoops.

To be honest, $90 to go all the way to Vermillion would have been an absolute bargain, but I definitely didn't have $90 to spend on transportation. I told her this, and she said "you're lucky I'm feeling generous" and agreed to take me to Route 29 for free. Generous indeed.

Before we got to Route 29, though, we stopped off to pick up food stamps for her sister because there had been a tornado and her sister's house had lost power for a while. And then Frankie spent the rest of the drive belting along to the soul music on the radio because she said she's an aspiring gospel singer. Man, it was a trip.

Finally we got to Route 29, and Frankie dropped me off in what were without a doubt the boonies of Western Iowa. I mean, I literally might as well have been dropped off in Amish country because only three cars drove past me in the first 20 minutes and you can bet that not one of them stopped for me. I figured I'd have to walk a bit of a ways-- finally making it hitchHIKING after having such good luck out west-- and so I went to the big ol' barn across the highway that had a big ol' sign that said "Iowa Food and Grain Co." and a big ol' "RESTAURANT" painted on the barn.

And wouldn't you know, the whole place was boarded up. Typical. Yup, it was going to be that kind of afternoon.

No less hungry than I was before, I set off down the road and walked from 3:15-4:56. Yes, over an hour and a half. And yes, at least half an hour of that time was during a downpour. I'm not making this up. I was fucking drenched.

You'd think that someone hitch-hiking in the rain would be more likely to get rides, right? At the very least, that's what I thought, but boy was I wrong. It seemed like the very minute it started raining the traffic picked up, but every single car was going right by me. It was unbelievable.

You also need to keep in mind that this was literally, and I do mean literally, in the middle of nowhere. The exits were about two miles apart, and there was absolutely nothing but corn to be seen in any direction from the road.

Finally Kurt picked me up in a blue Mazda Protege and took me, from the best that I could tell, from Butt-Fucking Egypt to Butt-Fucking Egypt. Kurt was seriously just a weird dude, and there isn't any more I can say about him. He offered to take me all the way up to Sioux City, which was convenient but meant I'd have to ride a long way with a weird-o, so when he suggested dropping me off at a rest stop along Route 29 I jumped at the chance. 15 minutes in the car with him, and damn did I just get a weird feeling about that dude.

Anyway, Chuck the truck-driver was sitting in his truck at the rest stop when we got there, and I went over and asked him for a ride. He was VERY skeptical but said he'd take me to Sioux City. When I got in he told me I was the first hitch-hiker he'd ever picked up, which was surprising. Not only that, but he was really not friendly at all-- maybe the least friendly truck driver ever. Not including the truck drivers that rape and kill you.

The thing about Chuck is that, considering he's a man who spends so much time driving, he was unbelievably critical of a life on the road. I told him that I like the freedom of being able to travel around, and the ability to do it all for practically nothing, and he told me that I should think about settling down instead. It was pretty bizarre.

When we got to Sioux City Chuck dropped me off and I only had to wait ten minutes before John picked me up in a gray Hyundai Sonata and took me the rest of the way to Vermillion. John is a South Dakota State student who hates the University of South Dakota with a passion, but said that I was probably better off going to Vermillion anyway. Which could have been a trick, I'm not really sure.

He said he wants to live in South Dakota his entire life, and when I asked him why he wanted to stay for so long he said "I'll probably live on a ranch and raise cattle the rest of my life." Thrilling. Who WOULND'T want to live in South Dakota forever?

He then pulled out some pictures and told me to look at his girlfriend, who was admittedly pretty cute. I said as much, and he gave this little smirk and said "Uh, yeah, that's an understatement." I hated this dude.

Then he told me that he usually picks up hitch-hikers, and he said "But I always have protection." And I swear to you he pulled out a knife. A fucking knife. And not a kitchen knife. A knife that could easily kill a man. This is the kind of kid who goes to SDSU? Take me to Vermillion, please.

Finally we got to Vermillion, and it was fortunate that I was so disgusted by John-- and, therefore, with all of SDSU-- because the town isn't much to write home about. In fact, it's nothing to write home about.

Vermillion? More like Verhundred. Wah wah.

By the time I got to Vermillion it was getting late, so I asked some people about a good place to get some food, and they said that most of the USD students eat at Dairy Queen and Burger King. Great.

After a hearty meal at DQ-- which seemed like the lesser evil-- I headed downtown to the four bars in Vermillion.

The bartender at the first bar was pretty cute but kinda big. Well, rather big. And isn't that just the most tragic thing of all? I always feel bad when I see a cute girl who's also a fat chick, like I should do something about it.

Anyway, because I had my pack the CG-FC started asking me about what I was doing, and the other dudes sitting at the bar listened in. The first thing from any of them was when this one dude came up behind me and said "You ever get beat up when you're traveling?" which was, shall we say, unnerving. These dudes really just didn't get that you don't have to spend your entire life in one place. They were so confused with what I was doing-- I mean, literally confused, like they just didn't get that a person could travel around after college. I almost felt bad for them. As I was about to leave this bar, one of the dudes bought me a beer and the CG-FC behind the bar gave me a shot. Remember the free drink from the previous night? Now you'll see...

The next bar I went to was simply called The Pub, and I sat down at a table with what turned out to be a local softball team made up of recent graduates of USD. These girls absolutely loved me and bought me three drinks, but all of them had boyfriends so they said they'd make sure I found a place to crash for the night. So that took care of that.

Then we went to Kerry's, and the girls bought a couple more drinks for me. This is also where I met the guys who said they'd put me up for the night. Of course, they said they'd put me up for the night VERY begrudgingly. Still, I don't so much mind that as long as I have a place to crash.

After the bar closed, I went with one of the couch dudes to a "bonfire" which, just like the one in Provo, was just some people sitting around a fire-pit. Unlike the one in Provo, though, this one was pretty, well, weird. I'll say that it was an eccentric crowd, for the sake of not being mean, and while I'm the first to support eccentricity, this one was just a bit too much. When the dude who was playing guitar busted out the 4-Non Blondes song "What's Up" (so I wake up in the morning and I step outside...) it was just too much.

Finally we went back, not a moment too soon, but when we got to the apartment the other roommate was leaving to go to the bonfire. We said we had already been, and I certainly didn't feel like going back, so the first roommate and I stayed.

Then the CG-FC from the bar came over and was hitting on the dude. Boy was that awkward. There was absolutely nowhere for me to go, so I just pretended to be asleep and, after a little while, the CG-FC left and I did in fact fall asleep on the chair. And that was the night.

Now, if this sounds bad, it isn't really even the half of it. The truth is, these two dudes, or at least the one I went to the bonfire with, were the most inhospitable couch I've ever had. They literally, and this is not a joke, tried to ditch me three times. First at the bar, when they tried to leave without me noticing, then at the bonfire, when the one dude again tried to leave without me noticing, and finally as we were getting ready to walk back to the apartment, when the dude once again tried to hurry off without me noticing. I noticed it each time, but if you think I was out of line for cock-blocking the dude back at the apartment, hell, he got what was coming to him.

Not to mention, she was a fat chick.

6 July 2008: Lincoln, Nebraska

Well, just like my second night in Tempe, I got woken up by a cop.

The difference, though, is that unlike the situation with that cop, when I had no conception of time or place, this time I knew exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing. So when the cop asked me a few questions, I had answers. He told me to go somewhere else; not because I was doing anything illegal, though, but because he said it wasn't safe to be sleeping where I was. The grass outside the campus chapel seemed like a perfectly safe, not to mention holy, place to spend a night, I thought, but at least the cop wasn't being a dick about it.

So I walked towards the main part of campus and slept for a couple more hours outside the library, a bit of a ways from where another pathetic-looking man was spending the night. When I woke up I got a cup of coffee and paroozed through a newspaper. This was pretty much the first contact I had had with the outside world during my entire time on the road, as I hadn't once read or seen any sort of news.

This also, I'm sad to say, was the most exciting thing I did that afternoon.

That's because, after I left the coffee shop, I spent the day walking around town. Now, maybe because of my Trenton-inspired preconception of Lincoln, I had been expecting a dirty town with a bunch of nothingness. I was wrong about the dirty part-- Lincoln is actually pretty nice. But I was absolutely correct about the nothingness.

Lincoln, as far as I can tell, is two blocks of main street and a college campus. I know there's a capital building there somewhere, but I didn't really have the energy to find it. To be honest, I almost feel as though I were blacked-out the entire afternoon. I'm not really sure what I did. All I know is that I spent nearly the entire time walking around and found nothing substantial. At all.

So let's fast-forward to that evening, because even if I wanted to write about what I did in Lincoln-- and I do-- I couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was.

As it got towards evening I decided it was time to find a place to crash. Going back to the area where the party had been, if not to the house itself, would have been the obvious answer except for that I had no idea where it was. And when I asked people "where would student house parties be around here" no one could tell me.

In fact, no one could tell me where any sort of student housing was at all until someone finally said that a lot of students live "on the other side of the train tracks."

Uh... I didn't know much about Lincoln at that point, and still don't to this day, but I'm pretty sure that "the other side of the train tracks" is typically not where you want to begin your search for anything. Unless you're searching for drugs.

Since this was the first answer I had managed to get, though, I crossed the tracks and began to look around. As I had expected, the houses were pretty run-down and decrepid and, to be quite honest, rather trashy. I mean, some of them even had above-ground pools. Above-ground pools, I tell you!

But I found out that, among this group of houses, there actually were a few student houses. And, if I went a few streets further, there were even more. So I went a bit further since I figured it couldn't get any bleaker than where I was, and this new group of houses did certainly look a bit more studenty. But the problem was that no one was outside. And I do mean no one.

(One thing I should probably mention here is that, even though I'll talk to anyone on the street or on a porch, the one thing you can never do is knock on a door or ring a doorbell. Absolutely never. Obviously.)

Anyway, since the houses weren't working out I walked one more block to an apartment building, and almost immediately I saw a kid with a backpack get out of a car. I walked up to him and asked if I could grab a quick shower, since this was what I needed most on account of having not showered since my last night in Laramie. He said "Sure!" With the exclamation point.

We went up and I cleaned up a bit, and when I came out of the bathroom this dude Jason was watching "Old School." I gave him $3 for three beers-- including a Blue Moon, so I made out in the deal-- and watched the movie for a while, but when I asked him if he wanted to come out he said he couldn't.

He said I could leave my pack in his apartment for the night but that he was leaving at 5:00 to do his paper route-- awesome-- and wouldn't be back until 7:30, so I had to pick it up sometime else. I told him I'd be by at around 7:30, and I headed out.

The first bar I went to had a band but also a $5 cover charge. The band sounded alright, and it was a Sunday so I figured the options would probably be limited, but paying a cover charge to get into a bar was an absolute no-no for me. So I talked to the guy for a little bit, and eventually I got him to let me in for free. Not too much trouble, really, but if I had had my pack with me it would have taken half the time.

Once inside I started talking to this dude about how I was traveling around, and pretty quickly he bought me a beer. Now, up until this point I hadn't paid a penny for hospitality and hadn't paid a penny for transportation since getting to Tempe the first time. I was doing OK with food, what with kind drivers and trips to Whole Foods, but paying for alcohol was the one thing keeping my trip from being stupid cheap. And by stupid cheap I mean less than $25 for the month.

So on that front, let's just consider this beer the first of the second half of my adventures.

When I left this bar I walked across the street to another and sat down at a table across from a couple girls. The one on the outside kept looking over my shoulders towards the bathroom, and I assumed she was looking for her boyfriend. Which would have been a disaster.

But that would have been delightful compared to what I got. What happened instead was two girls came out and one of them glared at me and said "Who is HE?" Because even worse than intruding on a girlfriend is intruding on a girls' night out.

This main bitch then led the other three girls to another bar which was having an '80s dance night. That did sound fun, and even though the main bitch was obviously taking them away I figured I'd head that way too. So I finished my drink and bolted.

And it WAS pretty fun, but that was because I didn't see any of the girls from the first bar. Eventually I did see the first girl, the one who had been looking over my shoulder, and she said hi but was looking pretty miserable. Almost immediately after that I saw the main bitch, who literally and bluntly told me "you can't be here."

I didn't really care at this point, not to mention the fact that this was an almost perfect way to cap off the night in utterly underwhelming Lincoln. So I walked back to Jason's place.

Oh, but first I walked about a mile in the wrong direction. That was fun.

Also fun was re-crossing the train tracks at 2:00 in the morning. Maybe not the best of ideas under different circumstances.

Finally I got back to Jason's apartment building and, figuring he'd be awake soon enough, I crashed in the doorway. As I had expected, he woke me up when he left for his paper route at 5:00, and I went into his apartment and slept on his couch until I came back.

I'll tell you, that Jason was a good dude. Let me in to take a shower with no questions asked, then sold me three beers for three bucks even though one of them was delicious, and then was more than happy to oblige me with a couch even though I was totally unexpected. Good dude.

5 July 2008: Lincoln, Nebraska

When I woke up this morning Ryan took me to get my pack from Andrew's shop and then dropped me off at Route 80 just outside of town. I was pretty tempted to stay longer, not because I had particularly enjoyed Laramie-- although it was certainly not a bad town-- but because the next week was Jubilee Days. Andrew had told me to stick around because it was the best time to be in Laramie, and to the best of my knowledge Laramie's Jubilee Days is kinda like a state fair but for cowboys. Carnivals and rodeos and that sort of thing.

Now, not that I really go for carnivals and rodeos and that sort of thing, but part of me wanted to stick around to see what the town was like during Laramie's finest week. Not to mention that it would have been interesting to contrast this college town's regular atmosphere to its festival atmosphere.

But what it came down to was that, regardless of how enjoyable staying around for Jubilee Days would have been, it would have been pretty shitty to stay for 4+ days in Laramie immediately following my week in Provo. I mean, what bigger way is there to minimize the importance of what that week meant-- and the sheer fact that I stayed a week-- than to approach a week in the very next town.

So I decided to hit the highway, and my day on the road started slowly enough with a 53 minute wait before Billy picked me up in a white Plymouth Voyager and told me he would take me as far as Cheyenne.

Billy was a crotchety old cowboy. This dude wasn't messing around. I told him I picked Laramie for my Fourth of July because I thought it'd be the ideal place for some old-fashioned patriotism, and he said "Well, people love our country but hate the fucking government." Right on, brother.

So I asked him what his problem with the government was and he went into a long-winded rant about the government trying to take away his Second Ammendment rights. Like I didn't see that coming. But what was interesting about Billy was that, make no mistake about it, all he was talking about was gun ownership "for hunting meat and vegetable trading." He said that, at least among the people he associates with, people mostly hunt for food rather than sport. And certainly not to go shoot some guns just for the hell of it, like Andrew's friend Cody the Cowboy. So that's something to think about.

The most interesting thing about this interesting dude, though, was when I pulled out my notebook to write something. And this old cowboy looked over at me and said "Yeah, everyone should keep a journal. You know, so they can have stories for their grandkids." Sure, I dig that.

When we got to Cheyenne he pulled up to a Sonic and we got out to get some lunch. When it came my turn to order, I took one of the biggest risks of the trip. I ordered a double-cheeseburger meal. With a strawberry limeade.

I was banking on Billy the Kid buying me lunch. He hadn't offered, but I figured he was a nice enough guy and seemed pretty happy to help me out with the ride, so I thought it was worth a shot. Bear in mind, if I had misjudged and the risk backfired, I would have been out $5 for a lunch. Or, to put it in other terms, I would have been out my dinner that night for a lunch.

Well, I guessed right. And I was rewarded for my risk with a feast.

After we finished, Billy drove off and I got back on the on-ramp. I tried thumbing for 15 minutes, and while that's nothing compared to the waits I'd been having recently it was very hot out and I didn't exactly have the best feeling about this particular spot. Not to mention that Sonic's happy hour had just begun, and you know what that means: half-price strawberry limeades!

So there I am, sitting in a booth and sipping on my strawberry limeade. The family in the booth on my left was cleaning up their stuff and the mom said something about taking some food for the drive. You don't take food for the drive if you're going an hour away, so I asked if they were going east and they said yes. Jackpot. I asked if I could get a ride, and the mom looked pretty uncomfortable and said she didn't think so.

I took that for an answer, but a minute or so later I asked merely out of curiosity where they were going. The mom said they were going back home to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"You see, here's the thing..."

Now, for many reasons, there was no way on earth I wasn't getting in that car. And really, how could they possibly refuse a Wolverine? But the mom was adamant that they had no room. I couldn't believe it. They were literally driving to my ultimate destination and no farther, and they couldn't even give me a ride one state over. I was so mad.

So I was walking back to the on-ramp, and a car passed me and the Ann Arbor mom told me to get in. I knew she'd come through.

So there I was now, in the back of a black Ford Explorer, going 450 miles in one fell swoop from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Lincoln, Nebraska. I couldn't believe my luck. The mom was Anne and the dad was Jeff, and there was a hot daughter named Jude and an autistic son named Gabe. They gave me their leftover food and offered me their portable DVD player to watch "Corpse Bride"-- though of course I said no, as that would have been crossing the line-- and just like the ride from Coalville to Laramie I was the king of the road.

Even more serendipitous than the previous ride that could have potentially get me as far east as Chicago was this ride which could have gotten me as far east as home. But not for one second did I consider taking it the whole way. Of course not.

So instead I had two options: 1) go forward with my plan and get to Lincoln at 10:00, 2) call an audible and get to Omaha at around 11:00. Now, as bad as arriving at a town at 10:00 is for one's chances of scoring a couch, arriving at 11:00 is an hour worse. So the choice seems like it should have been a no-brainer.

But given how late I would be arriving-- much later than a typical "late arrival"-- I was pretty sure I was fated to sleeping outside regardless of where I was. So the next question was, which of those two towns would be more friendly towards the homeless? I don't know anything about either one, but because Lincoln is the capital all I could think of was Trenton. Not a pretty place at night. And since the Counting Crows have a song all about Omaha, I knew it couldn't be a terrible place.

What it came down to in the end, though, was that the prospect of spending a few days at the University of Nebraska seemed a tad more interesting than Creighton University. So Lincoln it was.

They dropped me off about a mile from campus, and when I finally got there, boy, it was kamakaze time like never before. I went into a parking garage and changed my clothes behind a car. Then I went into a restaurant and brushed my teeth in the bathroom. I was ready to go.

I asked the first group of kids where a good student bar was and they said Buffalo Wild Wings. Uh, lame. But there eight of them, and the girls were cute and the guys seemed alright and, since they were heading to B-Dubs already, I headed there with them.

Let me tell you, B-Dubs was fucking PACKED. There was a UFC fight on the television and everyone was watching it like they were half-expecting Lindsay Lohan to appear out of nowhere and take her shirt off. Those Nebraska kids love their UFC. As one kid told me, "everyone comes here for fight night." Whoop de doo.

I was pretty hungry by this point since I hadn't eaten since lunch, so I grabbed a plate of nachos that was left on the table next to us and started eating, which, contrary to what I would have expected, the cute girl standing next to me thought was funny while the dudes thought I was a real jerk, apparently.

So for the next half hour or so I was talking to this one girl, while the five guys talked to the other two girls and gave me dirty looks. Finally, and I'm not sure how, it came up that each of the three girls were dating one of the guys. The girl I was talking to included. I figured they were chumps and wasn't all that fazed, but then the girl I was talking to mentioned they played college basketball. Check-mate. I asked her where they played, and she said at St. Ambrose University, a 4,000-student body Catholic school. Big fucking deal.

By this point the B-Dubs scene was boring me and the situation had just turned into a huge "whatever," so I headed out to the main drag to hit up some more bars.

Now, I of course still had my pack with me, but it being Saturday night most places weren't exactly pack-friendly. And the ones that were weren't anything to write home about. So eventually I made my way to the "hippie bar." A very cute girl named Jes was outside and asked me if I was traveling. I said something, she said something, I said something again, and we went in.

This was going very well for a while, and I thought I had my couch lined up. Or at least my night. But Jes slowly started to drift off and so I moved over to one of her friends. When the bar closed, the friend of Jes was going to a party and she told me to come with her. So I figured I was money again.

So the friend drove us and when we got to the party I put my pack in the apartment downstairs. Things were looking good. But slowly the friend of Jes started to drift off, and I moved over to a cute girl with bangs. Which is important because girls don't normally look that cute with bangs. In my humble opinion.

By this point the place was thinning, though, and I was getting pretty bored. Not to mention that my will to party had pretty much been extinguished by the false hope of Jes and her friend. So I retrieved my pack from the downstairs apartment and walked towards campus.

The first suitable place I found for crashing was on the grass outside the campus chapel, and so I lay down and went to sleep. This was the first time that I had slept outside during the entire trip, which is pretty impressive if you consider how long I had been on the road. Well, it was the first time if you don't count the night in Tempe-- er, Phoenix. Which I don't.

Not to mention, it was nice out and I always like sleeping outside once in a while. Really makes me feel like I'm homeless. And forget that I graduated from the University of Michigan.

4 July 2008: Laramie, Wyoming

When we woke up in the morning Andrew and I went back to his parents' house so I could meet the people who had unwittingly granted me their hospitality. His mom was a lovely woman who was incredibly nice like her son and who took to me rather quickly, maybe partly because she is from Michigan. His step-dad was also a friendly dude, although he was wearing some unbelievably short shorts.

We stayed for a little bit and before we left Andrew's mom invited me to come back that evening for the Fourth of July BBQ party she was hosting. So, well, I guess the guy at the shop had been serious. My bad.

First thing first, though, we went to a BBQ outside his friend's tattoo shop. Or, I should say, it was a BBQ/extreme croquette match. There were five croquette things, each of which was essentially an obstacle in its own right. You know, up-the-ramp-down-the-tube-hit-it-through-the-hoop sort of thing. It was really pretty fun, even though one of the things took literally 45 minutes for even one person to do it, and then everyone else just skipped it.

The kids there were all pretty cool for the most part, which probably had something to do with the fact that they were all friends of a tattoo shop owner and not just regular Wyoming douche bags. Sorry to anyone from Wyoming. Two of the cooler ones were named Ransom and Deal, which just goes to show that in addition to Cody, Wyoming parents love to name their children after cowboy money transactions.

Deal, it should be pointed out, was crochetting a Rastafarian scarf. It can't be argued that anyone who creates any Rastafarian trinket is a cool dude. But, I gotta tell you, I always thought that crochetting anything in Wyoming got you killed. Even if you were crochetting a condom depicting two lesbians having sex. Crochette? Hasn't he seen "The Laramie Project"?

Another cool thing about Deal is that his eight or so year old son was there, and when someone uttered a particularly loud curse the son complained about it. Deal told him "All these grown-ups drinking beer here, they can't help cussing." Now that's a sensible father.

A not-so-cool thing about his son, though, was this random conversation we had.

son: Why are they called tailbones? We don't have tails.
me: Well, we had tails when we were monkeys.
son: We were never monkeys.
me: ***walk away***

After all, you should never argue evolution with a cowboy. Even if it's a cowboy who crochettes scarves.

Since you were wondering, the BBQ was burgers and hot dogs, and delicious at that. But I had to temper my intake since I was going back to Andrew's place for another BBQ. And I had a feeling the grub would be just a few degrees better.

And since you were also wondering, yes, his sister was there. I'd say she was "Wyoming hot," which is the same as Michigan hot except for it's not in Michigan. She was cute and had a good body, and I would guess that for a state like Wyoming she would be in the top 10 percentile. But she wasn't attractive enough that I would get all incestual on her like Andrew had suggested. Weird.

I decided to leave the BBQ after a while and take a leisurely walk back to Andrew's. When I got there the BBQ had already begun and the place was nicely packed with family friends. And so it was that quite of number.

A family friends party.

To be honest, it was really pretty fun. Most of the guests were on the older side-- parent-age, so not terribly older, but older enough-- but many of them were legitimately alright. Call it the older generation's friends-of-the-tattoo-artist scene.

So I spent the first part of the evening devoting equal time both to regaling the older crowd with tales of glory-- which they were surprisingly interested in-- and to enjoying been deap and gin and tonics.

And then Andrew's mom brought out dinner. And oh, what a feast: elk burgers and crab/lobster salad. It was pretty freakin' unbelievable. Definitely the best food I've ever had while traveling.

Through this whole time, I was pretty sweet. Take that for what it's worth, of course, considering the crowd of the people there. Maybe it's just me, but I think Andrew's mom would have been OK with me marrying her daughter. The bad news about that is that Sarah's boyfriend was there. Even though he was an absolute douche bag-- the kind of "tough talk" clown who realizes that he's at an older-crowd dinner party so you might as well talk tough.

He had picked up some fireworks to shoot off, which was a pretty decent gesture. But he bought six fireworks for a total of $28. I'm no expert on fireworks, but something tells me that when they average under five bucks a pop, you probably shouldn't expect much. So I didn't.

After the show we went up to the roof and watched the real fireworks. They were pretty cool, but it occured to me on the roof that I should have done whatever it took to have a date for the night. Since obviously I didn't do enough. But how money would it have been to have brought a date back to this roof and showed up and just been like "What's up, baby." Damn. It woulda been good.

Anyway, there WAS a blatantly divorced cougar sitting right next to me. Or maybe it was a divorcedly blatant cougar. Either way, maybe if this had been Santa Fe I would have been a little more intrigued. Not this time. No thank you.

Towards mignight I went downtown with Andrew, Gabby, and Catherine to meet Ryan at the Buckhorn. It was exactly the same scene as the previous night, and I was pretty weary from the long day and feeling kinda gross from not showering, so it didn't take too long for us to go to the Ranger.

Andrew and the girls left shortly thereafter and I was left with Ryan, who gave me his phone number and address in case I needed a place to crash. So that was set, and I was off.

I ended up talking to this one girl, Leanne, who was 29 and pretty cute. I'm completely positive she didn't say anything interesting the entire night, and when she asked if I wanted to go with her and her two friends to Shari's, the late-night food joint, I said why not.

Now, like I said, I was exhausted by this point and feeling gross in general. Add to that, Leanne's friends were bitchy. And to that, my drunk-goggles were wearing off and Leanne was looking a little less cute and a little more 29. Figuring it'd be nice to get something out of it, I turned to Leanne and asked "buy me hash browns?" Her bitchier friend said "You know, this band came to town last week and they wouldn't let us buy them food. Because they're tough." Really. How interesting.

And then Bitchier started telling this unbelievably rambling story, something about some time she was traveling, and I'm telling you it was the most boring and uninteresting story I've ever heard, and at the end I said in my most obviously and painfully sarcastic voice "WOW, great fucking story." Bitchier gave me a bitchy face and said "Don't be an asshole." And then, I swear this is true, Leanne said to Bitchier "He wasn't being sarcastic, he likes traveling." I couldn't believe it. I had to leave right then and there.

So I went back to Ryan's place.

3 July 2008: Laramie, Wyoming

I woke up this morning after a gorgeous night of sleep and remembered that I was still the only one in the house. So I decided to make it a nice afternoon.

Which basically meant lounging around the house until 3:00, doing laundry and using the internet. I was the king of the castle, my friends. I decided to make myself scrambled eggs for a late breakfast, and then realized I didn't know what I was doing and so I completely doused them in salsa and it wasn't half bad. I then decided to make a quesadilla for an early lunch, and I realized I didn't know what I was doing with that, either, because five minutes in the microwave gives you quite literally two soggy tortillas in a pool of melted cheese. Delicious nonetheless, thank you very much.

Anyway, at 3:00 Andrew came and picked me up from the house. Not that I wouldn't have been happy spending the whole day there, but getting out was fine by me-- not to mention that he had already been more than gracious enough. So we took a drive a bit of a ways out of town and spent a little while just walking around.

So here's the deal about Andrew. First of all, as was perfectly obvious the previous night and reinforced this afternoon, he's an incredibly nice guy. But more recently, what I got is that, for one of the nicest guys I met on the road, he unfortunately had "the worst year ever" in 2007. During that year he got divorced, after what seems to have been a pretty steady and gradual deterioration almost immediately following their marriage, and one of his good friends died. So, unfortunately, that's where he's coming from.

Currently, he's dating the girl Gabby I met the previous night, but he's pretty reluctantly in that relationship, as things sped up faster than he had expected-- or would have liked.

And thirdly, he takes somewhat frequent trips to San Diego and always stays in the same hostel whenever he goes, to the point that he's good friends with the guys who work the desk.

Now, you probably didn't need to know the first, didn't care about the second, and aren't too impressed by the third. But the point of mentioning all this is that, along with the fact that he's a naturally out-going and friendly guy, there's no one that I can think of who is more primed to hit the road than Andrew. Seriously, you aren't telling me he could use some time out of Wyoming? I wouldn't particularly want to drown myself in the first situation, especially since his ex-wife still lives right outside of Laramie, I sure as hell would want to get away from the second situation, and if he's already taking road-trips and staying in hostels, hitch-hiking and couch-surfing is just the next logical step. We need to work on this.

When we got back in the car, Andrew suggested going back to Third Street to have some drinks and meet a few of his friends. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't crazy about this idea. I'm pretty luke-warm about day-drinking in general. And, guess what, when you take a month's worth of night-drinking and decide to add day-drinking to the equation, it's not the best idea.

Andrew was pretty adament about it, though, and so we went to the bar. But first we stopped by the shop that he works at to drop off my pack for the night so I wouldn't have to worry about it. The dude who owns the place was there, and when Andrew asked him what he was doing for the Fourth of July he said "going to the party at your mom's place." Dude, people in Wyoming are lame as hell.

Anyway, we got to Third Street and met his buddy Rudy, his other buddy Ryan, and Ryan's girlfriend Christine. I had a beer and hung out for a bit, but after a little while I grabbed Andrew's bike and headed back to his place to rest a bit. Please, I'd like to see YOU spend a month on the road.

I got back to Andrew's street fine, but when I got there it occured to me that I had no idea which house was his. And even though I had been dropped off at it the night before and had left it only a few hours earlier, I hadn't a clue how to recognize it.

I tried calling both Andrew and Gabby but neither one's phone was on, so I started knocking on doors. I had seen an envelope on the kitchen counter that morning and thought it had been addressed to someone with the last name of Voonman so, in an effort to sound like I had a reason to want to know where this family left, I asked "Do you know where the Voonman family lives, they have a son named Andrew?"

Everyone that came to the door, though, was unbelievably old, and no one knew where the Voonmans lived. Needless to say, that's because the last name wasn't actually Voonman, but finally a younger dude knew who I meant and pointed me to the house at the end of the street. Which, now that I thought about it, did look sort of familiar.

So I lay down for a little while and rested, which is really all I needed, and then showered and walked back downtown. I met up with Andrew and Rudy and we went to the Buckhorn bar, which had $1 shots of Jack Daniel. Not bad.

The bar wasn't really anything special, so there isn't much need to talk about it. But the one thing to point out is that Ryan and Christine were there also, and Ryan was wearing a sleeveless shirt and Christine was wearing a hat. Now, if a guy wears a hat to the bar or a girl wears a sleeveless shirt to the bar, it's pretty typically hot. Or, at least, it's pretty typical, and so it leaves the possibility that they might be hot. But, really, is there anything white trashier than flipping it around and having a guy wear a sleeveless shirt or a girl wear a hat to the bar? I'm not too sure.

After a while we went to the Cowboy Bar and met up with Rudy's baby-mama. The baby-mama was pretty cute and an incoming freshman, although 25 years old. So she's an old incoming freshman. Doesn't have quite the same magic to it.

Anyway, there was a country band in the main room but I had had way more than enough country music by that point, so I sat with Rudy and the baby-mama, because Andrew had gone off somewhere. Rudy was being a dick to the baby-mama and largely ignoring her, so she was talking to me instead. You know, because we were sitting next to each other. At a bar.

After a while Andrew came back with his buddy Cody, since there's at least two in every Wyoming family. So, in talking to Cody, he mentioned that he was a few days away from beginning a jail sentence of 1 to 4 years because "you can't do drugs and have a gun at the same time." When I jokingly said that he should just cross the border into Colorado and escape, Rudy interjected that "I'd never go there, here you can go five miles and shoot a gun, in Colorado I'd have to give my guns up."

The only thing better than that was, in the same conversation, when Andrew said his sister is hot and "has a great rack." Those were his words. About his sister. Awesome.

Finally we decided to go to the Ranger, which Andrew described as the last-half-hour bar in Laramie. When we got there Andrew said that Rudy was pissed at me because I was hitting on his baby-mama. Right. So, first of all, he was being a dick to her the entire night. Second of all, I hadn't said a word to her at all other than when we were sitting next to each other at the bar and he was ignoring her. I wasn't hitting on her at all. But boy was I inspired now.

Sometimes, though, it just ain't gonna work out. Rudy might not give two shits about the baby-mama, but she's crazy about him. So despite my best last-half-hour efforts, it was all in vain.

When the bars closed Andrew and I went to a house party we had heard about. Now, I had left my pack at Andrew's shop, but I didn't know exactly when I'd be able to get to it. That's really alright, since I wasn't going to need anything, but the one thing I did bring was my toothbrush. For one thing, you should always have a toothbrush. That's a basic rule. But for another, not only is a toothbrush a necessity for an unknown crash, but "a toothbrush in the back packet" is pretty much "a pack in the bar" for the observant. As long as you don't fuck it up.

I'll explain. We got to the party and a little while in a girl asked me "Why do you have a toothbrush in your pocket?" I don't exactly remember this all perfectly, but I'm pretty sure I said "I'm on the road. But where's YOUR toothbrush?" She said "Not here," and I said "That's bad for dental hygiene." Yup, that was the end of that conversation.

That's how you fuck it up.

Cursing myself, Andrew and I went back to Gabby's and I crashed on the couch.

2 July 2008: Laramie, Wyoming

Believe it or not, my trip didn't end in Provo.

After I left Rachel's place, in less than the best of moods on account of the Mormon cock block, I walked back to the twins' house to get my stuff. Like I've said, they always left a key in the mailbox for me, so I could get back into the house whenever I decided to call it a night, but Lenora had left town and Nerina was spending the night elsewhere and didn't know where her key was. So I had to climb in through Nerina's window.

That, in and of intself, isn't such a big deal because I'm pretty acrobatic. But I had to climb/crawl my way through the tightest of spaces, and I knocked Nerina's ceramic coin bank which she had gotten in Italy off the window ledge and it broke. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I literally could not believe it. What a fucking way to go out, Zach.

Anyway, I got my pack and walked to a bus stop a few blocks away. From there I took a bus little ways down and then another bus to the very end of the train line, at which point I took the train to downtown Salt Lake City. Not quite downtown, I guess, but just south of downtown near an on-ramp for the east-bound Route 80.

And just like that, I was back on the road.

I had gotten a pretty early start to the day, and despite the 90 minute trip from Provo to Salt Lake, I was still making good time. But when I got to the on-ramp I saw that there was another dude already trying to thumb a ride.

Now, when it comes to hitch-hiking, there is a certain degree of etiquette you have to employ when you've got competition. Anyone who's actually trying ot hitch hike has most likely been on their feet for quite some time, so it's not unreasonable for a second hitcher (me) to set up on the same on-ramp as the original hitcher (this dude) rather than walking to a new spot. The only thing is, you've got to give the first guy enough space so that, if he does thumb a ride, it's clear who the car is stopping for.

Well, this other dude was standing almost right at the very start of the on-ramp. I mean, he literally might have been five feet from where it began to curve. So, one, he had chosen a pretty terrible to stand. His loss. But, two, he gave me just about the entire rest of the on-ramp to choose from. My gain.

So I picked a spot a bit of a ways past him and set down my pack. And wouldn't you know, no more than five minutes later the dude turned around and walked past me without saying a word and stopped about fifty feet away.

No, no, no.

This dude had just totally infringed on my turf, and I was not pleased. But you gotta grin and bare it, since we were both trying to get SOMEWHERE. It's the etiquette of the road, after all, and if someone breaks it-- well, you just hope even more that you still get where you're going first. It's the bulletin board material of a life on the road.

Anyway, I didn't have to worry, because 17 minutes after I set down my pack A.J. picked me up in a silver PT Cruiser and took me from Salt Lake City to Park City. A.J. was, in a sense, my counterpart, but if my counterpart was a part-time plumber. Which A.J. was. But he's also a part-time snowboard instructor, which is sweet as hell. As he put it, "Plumbing is a job but snowboarding is a treat. I mean, teaching what I love to someone who's gonna love it, seeing a kid make his first turn-- there's nothing better."

He was leaving Salt Lake to go back home, because he had just fucked his friend's sister "who just turned legal" and he had to leave before his friend got back and kicked his ass. As if that weren't good enough, he said that he also a little while back fucked his other friend's mom at a party, a la "American Pie," and now "dinners over there aren't the same." What a champ. The other cool thing about this dude is that his third job, I guess, is he takes pictures from mountain peaks all over the world and sells them to be used in postcards. Pretty sweet.

So A.J. dropped me off in Park City, and no one was biting. It had been about an hour and, though that wasn't really so terrible, it had been one of the longest waits of the trip so far and I was feeling a little discouraged. Then this complete idiot pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride to Provo. I was on the east-bound side. Check a map.

To be perfectly honest, if he had come by ten minutes later instead I might have gone with him. I guess I just couldn't really escape the draw of the Provo charm. Although this time it might have been for Rachel.

Finally, after exactly an hour and a half, this dude Miguel Galegos picked me up in a silver Beetle, although he only took me to Coalville which was about ten minutes down the road. I wouldn't have minded talking to this dude longer because we had the following conversation a few minutes after I got in, when I saw the "Hillary Clinton '08" hat on his dashboard.

me: Guess you must be pretty upset about Obama being the nominee.
dude: Yeah, we were all pretty disappointed.
me: Who was?
dude: Well, Hillary obviously, but I mean all the rest of us too.

So yeah, it turned out I had thumbed a ride with one of the senior field directors of the Clinton campain. Which, all politics aside, was pretty cool.

Not to mention that this made him the most accomplished person to ever pick me up. By far.

Anyway, this dude Miguel obviously had a bit more to say than I did, not to mention that, having spent the past year almost exclusively traveling with and campaigning for Clinton, I probably didn't have a single thing to say that would have interested him in the least. Which I was fine with.

Anyway, I'm not going to lie and say that I understood even half of what he was saying, but one of the things I did pick up is that "People don't realize this, but Hillary's campaign is only suspended, not aborted." What that means, according to this dude, is that Clinton is going to request a role-call vote at the DNC in Denver, at which point-- as is the plan-- all her half votes will become full votes. And then, so says her senior field director, "Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President."

You heard it here first.

After Miguel dropped me off in Coalville, I had another long wait-- an hour and 27 minutes until Kansas and Cody picked me up in a silver Subaru Forester and took me to Evanston. These two dudes were on their way up to Bear Lake for the 4th of July, which was also where Provo-Katie was spending the holiday. So, for already the second time, I found myself very nearly saying fuck it to Wyoming and going back to Provo-- although this one would have been to Bear Lake, instead of back to Provo, to see Katie.

(I should say that, on the ride that finally took me into the state of Wyoming, are there any two more appropriate names for the kids who drove me than Kansas and Cody? That's partly ironic, but mostly pretty obvious. Which I guess makes it a paradox.)

I must also point out though that before we got to Evanston, and in fact less than a minute after they picked me up, Kansas and Cody decided to stop for another hitch-hiker. My nemesis from Salt Lake City.

Yes, that guy. We were on a race going east, and we ended up in the same fucking car. Unbelievable. And let me take a break from my story, now, because this dude's story needs a bit of explaining too.

Basically, he's hitch-hiking from Malibu to New York City, which he said was "a good distance." To put this in more obvious terms, he could have just as easily said he was going from Los Angeles to New York City, and that would have been the same "good distance."

1) Thanks for pointing that out. I had no idea California was far from New York.

2) Could there be any "gooder distance" than what he was trying to do? I mean, short of going from Seattle to Miami, maybe this dude has never looked at a map in his entire life because "a good distance" isn't quite how I would describe his journey.

Anyway, to make matters even worse, not only was he trying to hitch-hike 3000 miles, but his bag was stolen back in Malibu, he only had $5 left, and he was traveling completely empty-handed. Talk about a sob story, he might've been my nemesis but I gave the dude $5. Of course.

The worst thing about this dude, though, wasn't that he had no sense of hitch-hiking etiquette. It's that he told us, in complete seriousness, that New York "is the biggest city on the east coast" and "you need to stay hydrated, you know, it's important." I had no idea. I hated this guy.

By the time I got dropped off in Evanston, I was beginning to get a little nervous. I had spent over three hours thumbing on the on-ramps and had already gotten three different rides, and I had traveled a whopping 90 miles. I was maybe three miles inside the Utah-Wyoming border, and still had 300 miles to go to get to Laramie. If I had another hour and a half wait on the side of the road I'd probably end up spending the night in The Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Wyoming. If it took me three more rides to get there, I'd probably end up spending the night in The Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Wyoming.

But as the way of the road would have it, Casey, Jamie and Kendra picked me up in their gray Toyota Corolla as I was literally walking down the on-ramp. This is a rare occurance on the road, but easily one of the all-time moves. First of all, you look totally sweet as you're walking backwards, towards your destination, and your thumb is pointing the way, too. That's how you know you're a bad-ass hitch-hiker. But secondly, it's what I call the negative-minute wait, since you're still at least a minute from reaching the spot where you would set down your pack. Thus, you waited for at least one negative minute.

So that took care of the hour and a half wait dilemma. But even better? These three kids were on a roadtrip to Chicago. And so it took me less time to go the final 300 miles than it took me to go the first 90. What an incredible thing that was.

This was seriously one of the most beautiful rides I'd gotten. Four hours of straight driving. During the first half of the ride the windows were down, so it was too loud to talk. During the second half of the ride they were playing their friend's CD, so no one else was talking. I was just sleeping in the back seat and hanging out and loving it. Great times.

By the time I got dropped off in Laramie it was well past 9:00. My first move was to try campus and see if there was any activity, but the union was closed and the library was completely empty. So I went back outside and tried to find students walking around campus, but it was just as dead outside as it was inside. I saw three people in nearly half an hour, and what I got from them was that there was no "student housing," no "student food," and no "student bar." To top it all off, there were pretty much "no students."

What was recommended was to go to the cowboy bar-- as is to be expected in the great state of Wyoming-- which was apparently the hot bar on campus. So I went. Not exactly a thrill ride, but it was OK. There was a hokie rock band and a sweet harmonica player and a hot 26 year-old celebrating her birthday. I figured I'd give the cowboy bar enough time for the 26 year-old to either work out or crash and burn, and when it was clear it would be the second I decided to head out.

But as I was leaving I finally found out what I had been looking for-- where to go for a student bar. So I went to Third Street Bar, which is such an obvious "student bar" that I literally must have met the only three people who go to the University of Wyoming and didn't know that.

It should be pointed out before anything else, though, that I brought my pack to the bar for the first time on this trip. In all five of my previous college-town jaunts I only brought my school backpack. When I would go to the bar, if I hadn't already found a place to crash, I would just stash my backpack under a bush somewhere on campus and pick it up later that night or the next morning. It was small enough that it would be completely hidden, plus I figured that even if it was stolen I would lose some clothes and an old, ripped backpack. Not a huge loss.

Well, with my new pack there's no way I was going to leave it somewhere overnight. For one, it's too big and would probably be visible almost anywhere I could hide it, and for another, I sure as hell can't replace it if it gets stolen. Luckily-- or, depending on who you ask, luck has nothing to do with it-- I had found a place to crash every night before I went out, so the pack was never an issue.

This time, though, I had no choice but to bring it with me. Not that I was particularly upset by it. There's nothing you can do or have at a bar that's more money than a big pack. If you walk into a bar with a pack, you're obviously a traveler and, bam, there's your conversation with anyone else who's in there. If you've got a pack everyone knows that you have some stories, so you're not going to spend more than five minutes the entire night by yourself.

Not to mention that, once in a while, the bartender will give you a beer on the house because you're "living the dream." And by once in a while, I mean the bartender at Third Street Bar.

Anyway, I sat at the bar for a little while but realized I wouldn't find my couch in my current location. So I picked up and moved to a table with three friendly-looking people and, no differently than if I were still at Denny's in Provo, I sat down.

It was a dude Andrew, his girlfriend Gabby, and Gabby's sister Catherine. Andrew was obviously and right off the bat an incredibly friendly dude and Gabby seemed pretty nice too. They went to the bathroom after a little bit and it was just me and Catherine, and I found out that she has a three-year old son and had gotten married the week before. And then, for some reason, I called her husband a douche. I'm not really sure why. Anyway, I guess that was Strike One.

So, as you might imagine, Catherine wasn't exactly crazy about me, but Andrew was digging the pack-- see, I told you-- and Gabby just kept smiling. I knew about 30 seconds from the moment I sat down that I had found my couch for the night, and I wasn't disappointed when the bar closed and we left.

In fact, I guess you could say that they didn't hook me up with a couch, because Andrew asked if I wanted to stay at his mom's house that night or go back to Gabby's with them. Not wanting to intrude on him and Gabby, this was a pretty easy choice. Thinking I might get to channel a little "A. J. time," the choice was even easier.

As it turned out, Andrew's mom wasn't around, so that part of the dream was over. But not only did I get the guest room to myself, I got the entire freaking house to myself. Not a bad deal.

25 June 2008 -- 1 July 2008: Provo, Utah

The Provo Challenge: Overview

If I had to sum up the Provo Challenge in one word, it would be "unprecedented." So many things made my time in Provo unprecedented compared to all my other adventures around the country, and most will probably never be topped:

1) Seven days in one town-- the longest stay prior to Provo was four days in Austin and five days on two trips through Boulder.

2) Six nights in the same place-- with a few exceptions, I usually don't stay more than one night in any one place, and it's never more than two or three.

3) Zero trips to the bar-- I maybe, MAYBE, spent five barless nights in all my adventures prior to Provo.

Those were the three big things, and I would say there's a 5% chance at most that any one of those three will ever be matched in any of the other towns that I do this in-- certainly none of the previous towns have even come close.

And that's what made the Provo Challenge so interesting for me-- not to mention why I felt a need to stay an entire week in the first place. 95% of college town nightlife is the bar scene, and with good reason. Even if you aren't drinking, in every college town across the country that's where you have to go to find people after 11:00 at night.

And so, just about every night during my adventures around this country I've ended up at the bar; not because I want to get drunk every night, and not even because I want to drink every night, but because otherwise I'm going to be lonely and bored. And the routine is the same pretty much every time-- meet whoever you meet and go back to their place. Or to a park if you don't.

But since no one goes to bars in Provo, the post-11:00 nightlife is at the Creamery or, later, at Denny's. And while that might not be as exciting as the bar, it sure as hell is more interesting because you actually get to talk to BYU students and find out what it's all about.

Not to mention that it's pretty nice waking up every morning for a week straight feeling good. It's a bit of an aberration during my travels.

I'll never spend a week in one college town again because a week in Santa Barbara would have been nice, but it wouldn't have been any more or less interesting than a week in Tempe or a week in Boulder. Because, though they're all cool towns, I'd be at the bar every night for a week in all three.

But in Provo, well, you never know. I'll admit that going to Denny's every night is more or less the same idea as going to the bar every night, in that it's the same scene, but it's an entirely different dynamic. Obviously.

Now, as far as the Provo Challenge, I only decided to call it that when I sat down to write about the first day. I was only planning on staying in Provo for a few days-- just long enough to get a feel for the campus-- so I had no preconceived notions of staying as long as I did, or of having my time in Provo define my entire trip. Which it did.

But, truth be told, I realized that I couldn't get the entire feel for the campus in only a few days-- even when you throw out all the activities and dances and barbeques I found myself invited to over the course of the week, at a school like BYU you absolutely have to at least stay for a Sunday.

And so, as I kept staying one more day after one more day, I realized that the Provo Challenge was spending a week in Mormon culture-- with Mormon friends and Mormon fun-- and still having fun. Hell, "and not leaving" would have been a challenge enough.

Now, as you can imagine, it wasn't a challenge at all. I had a hell of a time in Provo-- arguably the most fun I've had in any of the college towns I've been to, and definitely the most fun when you factor in the uniqueness of the fun that I had. But, as per the BYU Honor Code and the rules of the Provo Challenge, that meant no sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking, or cheating.

Let's skip right past "no cheating" without trying to think of a clever way in which I cheated while in Provo. Not worth my time.

"No smoking" wasn't an issue, since I like my lungs, and "no drugs" is pretty much a rule of mine while I'm on the road since I like to at least keep some sort of bearings about me. No problems there.

I passed "no sex" with flying colors, although some of the stuff with Lenora might have been considered risque were I a BYU student too. Still, though, no sex.

So that leaves us with "no alcohol," which I suppose is where I messed up because of the one night at Drew's friend's place. Had I come up with the idea of the Provo Challenge by that point, I probably wouldn't have had anything to drink that night, for the sake of truly acing all five aspects. But, even though I had a few beers, what's more important to me in terms of the "no alcohol" policy-- at least as far as how it relates to the Provo Challenge-- is that no alcohol is just a way of saying no going to the bar. If the Provo Challenge is about my having fun in Provo without the typical college town things, then going to the bar is more of an issue than having a beer at someone's house because going to the bar is how you meet people at a "typical college town." If I had not had those beers with Drew I would have still been at the same place with the same people-- the alcohol wasn't a means for me to meet people or find a place to crash.

Anyway, if those are the parameters for the Provo Challenge, I'd say I passed at least four and, in my opinion, all five. But, man, were there so many things to note about my week in Provo.

Without a doubt, the most important aspect of my time at BYU were Lenora and Nerina. It says everything in the world that I actually stayed at their house for six nights, and it says twice as much that nothing more than a Mormon make out and Mormon hook up happened during the entire time. Pretty inconsequential, really.

I stayed twice as long with the twins than I have with anyone else partly because of how nice they were and partly because of how much fun they were. Starting with my first night in town, when Nerina was so excited about my hanging out with them-- little did anyone know it would be for as long as it was-- and continuing throughout the whole week with the other dance and the movies and the water park and the picnic and, well, Church. I normally like to head out on my own when I'm in a new town and see the place for myself, but not once did I feel strained about being with the twins nearly 24/7. I never felt antsy to break away because they were the perfect guides around town and it was nothing but fun. I can't possibly say enough about them.

I can't say enough about them, but one thing that I absolutely MUST say is that they risked getting expelled by letting me stay with them. I didn't know this when I went back to their place the first night-- had I known I would have found somewhere else-- but letting a person of the opposite sex spend the night in your house breaks the Honor Code and is grounds for expulsion. I mean, that's huge. And they still let me spend six nights at their house.

Another thing, even more incredible, is that I was the only person sleeping in their house on Sunday night. The twins were sleeping at Deborah's house, but they left the key in the mailbox and said I could sleep there anyway. They left the key in the mailbox every night because I went to Denny's, but on Sunday night I was literally the only person in their house. I don't know if I've ever met people so trusting.

I really could spend hours talking about the twins, they were such incredible people, but I think something Nerina said on Thursday sums it up perfectly. That was the day that Deborah first came over and the twins didn't want her to see me. Since I figured I wouldn't be able to sleep there that night, I texted Nerina while I was hiding in Lenora's room and I asked if I could at least leave my pack at the house for the night and then pick it up in the morning. Nerina's reply was "That would be fine :-) It's still your home."

The main thing that I noticed about BYU students is that, when it comes to alcohol, 95% of them are as close-minded as could be. You might find an exception like Rachel, who was considering trying it, or Garrett, who hit it on the head with his analysis of BYU students, but 95% of the kids that go to school there have no idea that there's a middle ground between stone-cold sobriety and drunken belligerence. Countless times someone would qualify the things they do at night in Provo with "It's more fun than not remembering what you did the night before every time you wake up." And that's even some of the cooler kids, like T-O-Double D and Connor's crowd.

To most BYU students, if you drink then you're an alcoholic. They don't understand that it's possible to go out on a Monday and have two drinks or even that it's possible to go out on a Saturday and have five drinks-- and still be completely sober. And the majority of BYU studnets think that if you do have two drinks on a Monday or five drinks on a Saturday then you're scum.

Like Garrett said, even if you don't drink you still have to be comfortable seeing other people drink because, like it or not, it's going to happen. Even if you don't drink you're still going to find yourself at a bar, or in a drinking situation, from time to time. But when I asked some of the kids what they would do if down the line they went to a bar with friends, if they would be able to not have a drink even in that situation, most of them, I'm not even kidding, said "Well, I'm not going to have friends who go to the bars." Really? I mean, how close-minded can you be? Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, and not everyone who drinks is an asshole. If these kids really do limit their friends to those who never go out to a bar they're going to have a VERY small circle of friends.

Another thing about BYU students is that, in addition to not being at all comfortable with drinkers, they're not really that comfortable with random people. BYU Mormons are nearly all incredibly nice, don't get me wrong, but the whole approaching-people-and-talking-to-them thing is so out of the ordinary that it's nearly impossible for it to not work-- at least, I mean for it to not introduce you to whomever you're talking to.

A perfect example of this is the day I discovered the Creamery. Everyone that I met on campus was incredibly helpful about pointing me to where I could meet people, but not a single one of them was actually willing to hang out. In group settings they're great at inviting-- as per the two bbq-dance party invitations-- but they're absolutely terrible at being invited. You'll convince a hermit to hang out with you before you could convince a Mormon.

So when you approach a group of BYU students at Denny's or the Creamery, you'll get one of two responses: either the people will be so caught off guard that they're interested and intrigued or you'll be so unwelcome that they totally ignore you. I had both experiences.

But even if they're put off, if you can get through the first ten minutes you're as welcome as can be. Probably because it is Provo, and the students who go to school there don't do anything even remotely like what I do, most of them are pretty interested in hearing about it. It's just breaking through that outer shell of apprehension that's the tricky part.

But the biggest thing I learned is what I would call the sad truth of the Provo Challenge-- and that would be what Lenora told me on Tuesday afternoon.

"Maybe it's because I like you but can't. You're not here, and I won't be either. I promised myself not to like a guy like that until after my mission."

From Day One Mormon kids are told about the all-importance of marriage and family, and once they get to BYU the administration beats it into their heads relentlessly. I mean, that's all some of these kids-- especially the girls-- think about.

More than that, it's ingrained in them that pre-marital sex is bad, and even pre-marital fooling around is something to be ashamed of.

So what we're left with is kids who wouldn't dare hook up before marriage, but who are pressured to marry early-- and, for the girls, that pressure is huge. But while marrying early would at least get you laid sooner, that's an awful lot of pressure: finding someone at age 20 who you want to spend your life with.

As far as I can tell, that leaves a lot of unhappy people growing up, a lot of unhappy people once they start scrambling for a husband or wife, and potentially a lot of unhappy people when they realize they married the wrong person.

But the worst part is, that also means that a lot of people are going to meet someone they like "but can't." As though it's not bad enough evaluating people of the opposite sex only in terms of long-term-marrying-potential, to be upset and have to be ashamed of your feelings for someone because the situation of two years down the line affects the situation of today is really pretty terrible.

And when you throw in the effect of going on a mission, and having two years of your life essentially taken away-- well, losing two years of your life to a mission is unfortunate for many reasons, and this thing about "forbidden love" is certainly one of them. It's just a sad situation all the way around.

Anyway, that's that. I had a hell of a time in Provo, and the whole experience was seriously some of the funniest shit I've seen during my weeks and weeks on the road. I will say, though, that Mormons found at most 3% of my Provo stories funny. To hell with them.

I accomplished pretty much everything I hoped to when I decided to go to Provo, which isn't much considering that I wasn't expecting much when I made that decision. However, there was one goal I didn't accomplish that I REALLY wanted to. I didn't give a Mormon girl a hickey. That's it. My goal wasn't to hook up with a Mormon girl, because I realized even before I got there that if I did hook up with a Mormon girl it would be a huge no-no. All I wanted was to give one of them a hickey. Something completely harmless, but boy would that be a badge of shame to be walking around with. That was my only goal. Next time.



"I can't begin to thank you two enough. The fact that you risked expulsion to let me stay here wasn't lost on me, nor was the amount of effort you put into making sure the cat didn't kill me. My staying here for a week says all you need to know about how much fun I had with you two.

Nerina-- Thanks for your enthusiasm, soulmate. You're the only reason that I was even here to begin with.

Lenora-- You're truly one of a kind. Pretty ironic for a twin, no?

I'm sure I'll see you both very soon.

Cheers.
Zach"