This part two of a serialized account of a trip my wife and I took to Colorado & Wyoming earlier this summer. I will release subsequent editions over the next few weeks. Some names and places have been changed. Part One
12 PM Sunday – Leaving Colorado behind, Colleen and I planned on making a brief stopover Sunday night at the Bison Hoof Hotel in Dubois, Wyoming. An early departure the following morning would put us into Jackson by 9 or 10 on Monday.
We were going to stay with an old high-school friend of mine, Roger, who is a full-time guide, and had offered to take us to find some big browns on the Green River. I let Colleen do some driving while I settled into Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. As the sagebrush flew past the window, and I got deeper into the saga of heads and freaks touring the country on a Day-Glo painted bus, I began to imagine myself as a modern-day Ken Kesey, fueled not by LSD but by a 4-weight, out on the road in my own leather-upholstered 5-speed V6 bus, always moving FURTHUR, looking for that next bite.
4 PM Sunday – US Highway 279 through Sweetwater Station, Wyoming, 109 minutes from Dubois. *THUDDD SCCCRRTTTCHHHH* We pulled off onto the shoulder to inspect. The lower section of the front bumper had been ripped from its mount and had dragged on the asphalt, marring the sapphire blue plastic finish. Five minutes of head scratching and all I could come up with is several yards of tippet that certainly wouldn’t hold this clusterfuck together. Colleen suggested the brilliant idea to use my nylon belt. I lay down on the warm asphalt to Jerry-rig the bumper.
Tikatikatikatikatikatikatika
“T, Get up!”
*Thinks to myself* Get up? Why get up? I’m about to fix the damn car so we can get moving. *Not getting up*
“T, Get up!” Louder now, with more hysteria.
Tikatikatikatikatika
Ok fine. *Gets up.*
I heard vrroooomllooomloomboomlloombroomboomloom and looked down the highway, past the crippled Saab and see a silvery streak of motorcycles headed our way. Central Wyoming Hells Angels – Enforcement Division. Apparently, we had broke down on the wrong highway and were about to pay for it. Visualizing a DMT-crazed biker swinging a rusty chain into my head Skullfucked!, I took a step away from the highway and towards the sagebrush.
Tikatikatikatikatika
“T, GET OVER HERE NOW, IT’S A FUCKIN RATTLESNAKE!”
Not the Hells Angels? Suddenly I was 20 yards down the road, leaping like a madman in my Chaco sandals and Phish shirt as the Del Boca Vista Senior Touring Club zooms by.
*Phyllis nudges Fred and drawls over the vrrrrooommmloomlooomllloommmloomm “did you see that goon dancing down the highway?”*
Thanks for stopping FredAndPhyllis, we could really use your leather chaps and .357 Magnum right now.
After my heart rate returned to normal and the snake slithered off, I recommitted myself to getting BACK ON THE BUS this car moving again. My wife emerged as a huge well of support in this episode, first suggesting that we NOT try the Rio 5X fix and instead use a belt, and next, saving my hide from Lucifer himself. The Grateful Dead dancing bear belt actually held the bumper together pretty well. Back on the bus. On to Dubois. Furthur. Kesey would be proud.
Limping into Dubois, we saw that the Bison Hoof Hotel is actually the Serial Killer Suites, complete with a green-haired, tongue-pierced !freak! behind the desk who jokes that she just gave away our room when we go to check in. “Listen wacko, I just had a rattlesnake almost sink his fangs into my toe, I’m not in a mood to be fucked with.”
Ok, I didn’t actually say it. But once we got into the room, and the industrial cleaner smell hit Colleen, as if to suggest that something ?dirty? had just happened here, we tried to back out of our fiscal commitment to this shithole. Green hair tongue ring said no. While my wife bravely dealt with Sergei and the Turo insurance claim process, I began having a meltdown over this vacation. I had rented this duct-tape THUD SCCRTTCHH car that isn’t even manufactured anymore, and I had booked this hotel that we would likely be murdered in tonight. Things were so good just a mere 24 hours ago! There was no way I would see a trout stream the rest of this week. Unless I get back on the bus.
More Wolfe & Kesey that night while I waited for the inevitable axe murderer to break down our door. Pages and pages of Day-Glo painted hippies zooming around atomic-powered neon-colored chrome-plated postwar America, “taking more speed to keep going, psychic energizers like Ritalin, anything, and then smoke some more grass to take the goddamn tachycardiac edge off the speed, and acid to make the whole thing turn into something else”. I drifted off again, worlds away from the night before, but with an overwhelming resolve to stay on the bus.