Mystery Train: September 2004

When I left Chicago for Seattle on July 29, 2004, I thought taking notes along the way would make for some cool material to look at later in life. In the beginning, I thought the extent of the excitement would be a list of the music that provided the soundtrack for the 2,000 mile drive. I wound up getting a whole lot more than I bargained for.

Day One - Thursday, July 29
The Green Machine (my 1994 Ford Aerostar) has a 6x12 foot U-Haul trailer in tow, my dog Champ in the back seat, my friend Ross on the passenger side, and yours truly behind the wheel. 6am, we're on our way. Get out of Illinois, through the water park landscape of the Wisconsin Dells, into Minnesota through Black River Falls and the Twin Cities. We're making good time. The plan is to go 800 miles to Bismarck, North Dakota. The music today includes Rage Against the Machine, Treat Her Right, Soul Asylum, and of course a little Springsteen. Mostly, though, we listen to the Democratic National Convention on various NPR stations. About a half hour past Minneapolis, we hit the first unplanned kink. Smoke is pouring out from under the car. We pull over in the small town of Monticello, and visit the local mechanic, a guy named Red, who informs us that the Green Machine has no business pulling a trailer this size. He says it isn't so much the weight, but the trailer being taller and wider than the car, it's acting as a parachute, catching all the wind and making the car work much harder than it should. Long story short, the transmission ain't gonna cut the mustard. There's a U-Haul place in town, so we go there and swap out the 6x12 trailer for a smaller 5x8. This means unloading the 6x12, deciding which items will be left behind, and then loading the 5x8, sweating our nuggets off in the process. Among the items we leave with the U-Haul people are my coffee table, living room chair, office chair, fan, and laundry basket. The time we lose forces us to adjust the travel plans. Getting 800 miles to Bismarck was an ambitious plan in the first place. So we hit the open road and figure we'll drive until our eyes start playing tricks on us.

On the road in North Dakota. Oh yah! You betcha!

Finally, we make it 660 miles to Fargo, North Dakota at 11pm. Getting a hotel room is tough, because the USA Wrestling National Junior Olympics is in town for the week. Just after midnight, we find a Howard Johnson with a room and crash after a long day. Champ has been a good sport about the rigors of the day, so I give him a few treats and let him sleep on the bed. He is the greatest dog ever.

After a long and crappy day, I consider joining the Army. Well, not really.

Day Two - Friday, July 30
Day Two isn't too eventful (read: no major problems). Today's music includes Franz Ferdinand, the J. Geils Band, Ministry, the Clash, Screaming Trees, Guns N Roses, and the Voltaire Bros. Ross talks me into trying beef jerky for the first time (actually, buffalo jerky). Not bad, and a fine way to keep yourself occupied while driving. A biker gang called the Ramblers drives by us en masse. Way cool. We make it 620 miles to Billings, Montana. We'd like to go a little further, but the next town is four hours away and we're not up for it. Besides, with yesterday being such a long-ass day, we like the idea of stopping at a reasonable hour. This decision makes it clear that our three-day trip plan will be extended to four days, which is fine. With a population of 95,000, Billings is the largest city in Montana and holds 10% of the state's population. Yeeeeeee-haw! We stay at the Dude Rancher Lodge where, strangely enough, Ross has stayed before, while working a run of shows with David Copperfield. The place is pure 70's kitsch, but not in a nouveau retro way. Orange shag carpets. Wallpaper patterns that probably look better on acid. We go for a burger and a beer at a fine place that feels more like Chicago than Montana. After ten hours in the car, an ice cold beer is like liquid gold. We mosey along to a delightfully tacky joint called Coasters, where a one man band is doing covers, butchering Roy Orbison and enticing the locals to sing along with "Margaritaville." Oy vey.

This is what most of Montana looks like.

The sunset was pretty, in a Springsteen album cover kind of way.

Day Three - Saturday, July 30
We sleep in a little, get an oil change for the Green Machine, and have a nice, hearty breakfast at the Dude Rancher. Ross, a coffee snob, goes out to a local Starbucks-ish place after we order the meal. Initially, I think this is uncool, to bring outside coffee into the restaurant. But once he returns with a couple lattes, I not only support his maneuver, I applaud it. On the road, I must reconcile last night's musical catastrophe by listening to Roy Orbison. Now things start to get unpleasantly exciting. More smoke coming out from under the car. We pull over and let the car cool down, see if we're leaking any fluids.

Champ digs the mountains.

We get back on the road and things are hairy. Going uphill, we can go about 40mph. More smoke. What can we do? We're in Montana, 183 miles out from where we stayed last night and sixty miles to the next town. We decide to keep going, drive slowly uphill and let the car cruise downhill in neutral. Eventually, the transmission craps out and we're broken down in the middle of nowhere. No visible sings of civilization in any direction. No cell phone reception. Can't call AAA for help. This is the view from where we're stuck:

to the east

to the west

to the north

to the south

While hanging in the 100-degree heat for over three hours, a state trooper stops and calls AAA for us. A tow truck arrives and we discuss our options. Looks like the next town is about sixty miles away, a town called Butte. The tow truck driver, Doug, explains that Butte is the home of Evel Knievel, and this weekend is Evel Knievel Days, a weekend-long event that increases the town's population from its normal 25,000 to about 100,000. We'll never get a hotel room there. It's also a hardcore union town, which means nobody will look at the car until Monday. I ask what town we're in. "Oh, we're not in a town. We're in between Bozeman, which is thirty miles back east, and Whitehall, which is thirty miles ahead west." That's how middle-of-nowhere we are. We're not even in a town. In the name of forward progress, we decide that Whitehall is our place.

And so it seems, the Green Machine is on her death bed.

Whitehall is a very small town. A one-stoplight town. The kind of town you see in movies and read about in Kerouac's novels, but not the kind of place you ever expect to be stuck in. About a thousand people live there. On one hand, there are not a lot of resources to help us. On the other, people in small towns will try and help a stranger passing through. Doug calls around in search of a mechanic with a quote for a re-built transmission, and it seems the only transmission guy in the area can do it for $2,300, which is more than the car is worth on paper and more than I have. It seems the only other viable option is to leave the car behind, rent a U-Haul truck one way to Seattle, unload the contents of the trailer and the Green Machine into the truck, and get moving in the morning. The U-Haul in town has a fleet of two trucks and they're both rented. Dang. I tell Doug that he's done enough and we should all call it a day. He takes us to the Super 8. There are three options for dinner. There's an A&W place across the street, a pizza parlor down the road that closes at eight (and of course it's 8:15). Then there's the Two Bit Saloon.

Now that's a fine lookin' place.

Locals tell us the Two Bit was once owned by former Patriots standout Russ Francis.

They have burgers. And, it turns out, they also have cold beer, not to mention a pool table and a jukebox. Given our circumstances, the saloon appears to be just what we need. Rainier is the local beer, the burgers are big and juicy, and someone plays the Rolling Stones acoustic live album Stripped in its entirety. A perfect end to an imperfect day.

Day Four - Sunday, August 1
The original plan had us arriving in Seattle today. But as we're stuck here in Montana, 650 miles from our destination and no solution yet for getting back on the road, things are kind of uncertain. I call U-Haul and learn that the state of Montana is in a situation of indefinite stand-by availability. That means they can't reserve a truck for us. They can put us on a list and we can call every day to find out if they have anything for us, and from there the truck could be available for pick-up anywhere in the state. Montana is a huge state and the Green Machine sleeps with the fishes. I try Penske. They don't do one-way rentals anymore. I think maybe I can get a Penske, get my stuff to Seattle, drive the empty truck back to Montana and return it, then fly back to Seattle. It's an inefficient use of time, energy, and money, but at this point I'm not looking for the best option, I'm just looking for any option. The closest available Penske truck for a week is in Mizzoula, 108 miles away. Scratch that plan. Now I'm calling every car rental company in the Yellow Pages, in search of an SUV or a pick-up, any vehicle with a trailer hitch that can replace the Green Machine. Problem is, nobody will give me a one-way rental for one simple reason: in Montana, they'll never get an inbound one-way rental to replenish the fleet. It appears I may be out of options. What does this mean? Do I now live in Montana? Should I ask if the saloon needs a new bartender? Did Lewis & Clark have this many problems? What the f**k!!! It's 11am, I've made every call I could possibly make to get this travelling salvation show back on the road and things are not looking good. Doug (remember him?) is still working on it for us. He's calling around and trying to find a way to get us on our way. His brother in-law has a 3/4 ton Chevy pick-up that could tow us and our trailer to Seattle, but he is camping until tomorrow. We cross our fingers. Now, what else can we do but go back to the saloon and see if the burgers taste as good at lunchtime as they did at dinnertime? We bring Champ, and the bartender pleasantly informs us that the pool table is free and the Rainiers are a buck a piece. Sweet sassy molassy! Back at the hotel, there's a knock on the door. It's Doug's brother in-law. He's back from the camping trip. He can bring us to Seattle tomorrow. It'll cost some money, but he can get us where we're going. The added financial burden is not nearly as heavy as the one that's just been lifted, for now at least I know I will be in Seattle tomorrow night. Later, Ross and I go to the pizza parlor for dinner and learn that they have high-speed Internet service via their own satellite that's installed on a nearby mountain facing the town. Thirty-three people in Whitehall have Internet access, and it's all through the pizza parlor. The movie theatre next door has one screen and shows one movie at 8pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. If you've ever seen the Jim Carrey film The Majestic, that's just what this town is like. We check email, have some fantastic pizza, and call it a night.

Day Five - Monday, August 2
Our proper farewell to Whitehall is a hearty breakfast at the saloon. Eggs, biscuit & gravy, ham, hashbrowns, toast and coffee for two is less than ten bucks. We eat like cowboys and get ready to hit the road. While moving the contents of the Green Machine into the pick-up, Ross and I are carrying my television, holding it from the bottom, and like something out of a Three Stooges routine, all the insides of the t.v. fall right through the bottom, and the thing is in a million pieces on the ground. In a moment, I take quick stock of all the things I've lost in this deal, all that has gone wrong, and it was a "Why, God?" moment. If I see this happen in a movie, I'm laughing. But it's happening to me, so I'm a little pissed.

"Television is really bad for you, anyway." - Ross Berkson, Whitehall, Montana, 2004.

Sans boob tube, we're on the road again. The scenery throughout western Montana, Idaho and Washington state is marvelous.

Montana is famous for its unique rock formations.

The Continental Divide is an awesome sight, and to get through it you drive on a coninuous 5% grade incline for twenty miles.

Still in Montana. The little white thing on the mountaintop is a 90-foot statue of the Virgin Mary. I think she's making sure the students in Mizzoula are leaving room for the Holy Ghost.

Finally in Idaho. The panhandle forest, where silver mining is king.

We see some weird stuff in the eastern part of Washington state. It looks almost like a sand storm, but instead of sand it's a fluffy white powder blowing everywhere. We can barely see in front of us. There's a pile-up involving a handful of cars and a 40-foot trailer that we come within a few feet of participating in. Turns out, the white stuff is not the result of John Delorean's warehouse blowing up. It's ashes from the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. When it gets windy, the ashes are stirred up and whipped around, and it causes visibility problems for drivers. At times, they shut part of the highway down. 11pm and we're finally in Seattle. My brother Ed is waiting for us and he has pizza. He's a good man, that Ed. It's funny, with the midwest as flat as it is, you can see Chicago from many miles away. Here, one minute you're driving through the mountains and as soon as you come out of a mountain range... bam, you're in the city.

The Update
I love Seattle. It's noticeably smaller than Chicago, maybe a quarter to a third of the size and population. But it's urban enough, with all the trappings of a real city (dining, performing arts, etc.) and the music clubs are outstanding. Immediately outside the city in every direction, there are breathtaking mountains like Mt. Rainier, beautiful bodies of water like Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and hills everywhere. I'm renting a 4-bedroom Victorian house in the city with Ed and his fiance Britta. They have a cat named Five (because you can say "gimme five" and she'll slap you a high five with her paw). Trader Joe's just opened down the street and we might get Champ a job bagging groceries or stocking shelves, 'cause he's gotta start pulling his weight around here. Our house is nice and big, with high ceilings, a covered deck and a back yard. There's a cool little punk rock bar around the corner, and on Sundays a guy named Q, who is the spitting image of Tone Loc, brings his mobile BBQ spit and parks in front. You can get ribs or brisket with collared greens and potato salad, and he'll bring it to you in the bar. The very cool Washington Park Arboretum is down the street, too, where Champ and I run around. Went to a Seahawks game last week, the Bumbershoot festival this weekend, and generally getting around a lot to learn the city, enjoying every moment of it. Haven't been to a Mariners game yet. Maybe next week, when the Red Sox are in town. Haven't found steady work yet, but working on it. I did work a couple days for Prince when he was in town, I'd worked a few days for him in Chicago earlier this summer and his people put me on the Seattle gigs. Maybe I'll go work at Trader Joe's. It probably doesn't pay too well, but the employee discount on groceries is something you can put a pricetag on, and it's only five blocks away. Here are some photos of Seattle: