First, the specifics - this method requires no knowledge of GIS, no prior knowledge of shape data, and does not require any (downloaded) software. It’s as simple and painless as could possible be.

The agency I was working for had a small system of just five routes, although they ran in a few configurations, so all told, I had to create about 14 different shapes (each route has at least two shapes, the route there and the route back; plus a few extras. One route was a steady loop with required only one shape).

Step one involved stepping over to Google Maps and generating driving directions for the route. This was simple enough. Our routes sometimes had turnarounds or stops that weren’t on the street network, and it was impossible to get the route as it was actually driven; but that was OK - get as close as possible before proceeding.

Once your driving directions are complete, hit the Link button in the upper righthand corner, and copy that link to your clipboard.

In step 2, we’ll take that KML file over to Google MyMaps. Google MyMaps is a handy utility which you can use to draw your own lines and placemarks on a map. Go ahead and hit ‘Create New Map’ and name it whatever you like. You should see a link to “Import” data. Hit that. In the popup window, you’ll see a text field that says ‘enter the url of map data on the web’. Go ahead and paste your link. But before you hit ‘Upload from URL’, you want to add the following text to the end of the URL you just pasted: &output=kml. Don’t worry about why, just do it.Clea’

Your map should be right there in my maps. Go ahead and fix up your route if the driving directions weren’t exactly what you needed. Our system visited alot of senior homes and utilized turnarounds in their parking lot. Needless to say, Google driving directions didn’t consider such a thing and often had some extremely complicated turnaround procedures, so I had to do alot of optimizing of the routes.

Once you are done, go ahead and grab the link for your map (again, the upper-right hand corner of your map) and copy that. But this time, open up this site to convert your map to a shapes.txt file. You should have a dead simple form here. Paste your link in, hit go, and it should prompt you to download another file, called shapes.txt. Rename it whatever you named it before (except with a .csv extension) and save it to your hard drive.

You can go ahead and open up the .CSV in excel now. It is more or less ready to copy and paste right over into your shapes.txt file (note: I usually keep all the files in a single excel workbook for safekeeping, exporting CSV’s as I update the data). Before you do so, you should make sure to change the shape_id to something sensible. You will also notice that shape_dist_traveled is not calculated. We can use a simple excel formula to calculate the distance from point to point and generate these values rapidly. The formula I used is =IF($D8=0,0,ACOS(SIN($B7)*SIN($B8)+COS($B7)*COS($B8)*COS($C8-$C7))*6371+$E7). You can paste that right into column E for each row of  data you have.

This formula will actually error from time to time, giving the value “#ERROR” occassionally. You will notice this occurring when there is an identical sequence of latitude/longitude pairs (and thus no distance between them). If you see this, delete the firt row giving the error. You may now get a “#REF” error code. Go ahead and copy the formula from another cell and repaste - this will fix the links. You may need to do this several times.

I find it helpful to then copy that entire column and the re-paste it in place, taking care to ‘paste special’ and paste as values. This makes it possible to reorder your results (if you need to for whatever reason) and not change your values.

I sat there for a minute or two, considering what to do. I had the Triple-A card in my wallet and a working cell-phone, but I knew the New Jersey was a lot more than the 100 miles of free towing that would get.

“Worse case scenario, I can rent a car,” Micah said, but that didn’t make me feel too much better. My entire life was packed into that van and I couldn’t see much making it into the back of a Chevy Matrix. Also, it would cost a ton, and would cost time. I slammed the steering wheel, and hopped out to grab a pint of oil from the back. Micah had pulled so far over I almost fell into the ditch, but luckily remained upright.

We’d given it about 10 minutes to cool down under my suggestion, and I poured two quarts in, and then we waited again. Micah received a call from Foy, whom I’m sure was laughing on the other end of the phone. I suppose it was somewhat funny, but I was pissed. As far as I was concerned, crossing the Cascades, the Rockies, and through the heat of South Dakota (The Badlands in particular) were the major challenges - not a relatively busy highway in Middle America. This wasn’t supposed to be an issue.

After waiting awhile, Micah revved the engine back up, and I scanned the map for the nearest campsite. Getting off the road seemed appropriate. Micah pulled back on to the road, and Van Go’s power seemed a bit low - but we were back cruising at around 60-65 in no time, with no sign of enging stutters that had concerned me before. We turned off the Ohio Turnpike at exit 232 and followed route 11 through North Lime, and towards Beaver Creek State Park, which we knew nothing about. The dark and intermittently lit road slid over hill and dale, with few other cars or buildings along the way. We’d occasionally pass through small towns - places with populations in the 3 digits, but soon enough be off in the wild. Micah drove the way he does, which concerned me, but I figured now was the time to keep my mouth shut.

We eventually made Beaver Creek state park after about 45 minutes and pulled in. Immediately we see two big, unoccupied teepees, and I was thinking “Score!” in my head. Unfortunately there were reservation tags on them, so despite being unoccupied, we couldn’t use them. It was too late to set up the tent (and I was a bit flustered), so Micah simply plopped his sleeping bag on the ground while I carved out a space in the back seat of the van, and attempted to read Kavalier and Kray. My flashlight batteries waned quickly, and I decided to save the last few minutes for a real situation, and, at some point, fell asleep.

After exploring the neighborhood a bit, finding a “Seattle Style” coffee house, I waited across from the Dunkin’ Donuts near the Bryn Mawr “L” station. I knew where he was going to run because he left the page for the route up on the internet. I stalked him. Not too well, apparently, because he got back to the apartment without me seeing him, but I might have been busy reading the paper and just missed him.

We met back up, and went over the plan - drive to Akron Ohio to see the Akron Aeros minor league baseball team. We’d leave soon, like 9 am, get in to Akron at about 6pm, and then proceed from there. It’s not how things went.

First off, we got out of Chi late; maybe at like 11:00. We packed slowly, then drove down to Alvin’s place of work, and looked at the good work he was doing. I hope Micah explains it better in the comments, but the ultra-basic of it is that it’s a day center for kids. So there was that, but we hit the road.

We were going down Lakeshore Drive, past Oprah’s place. Micah and I discussed race and sex as they pertained to the election. I told him about my plan to go to Times Square on election night. We hit the freeway - I missed the UIC campus, which I would have liked to visit - and we were off.

We hit Indiana (and the Indiana tolls) pretty quickly. Unlike in Illinois, you just grab a ticket in Indiana and flash it when you leave the freeway, and pay a rated toll. There were Oases (Oasii?) just like in Illinois but they were on the side of the road, spaced about 50 miles apart each. It would be like this in Ohio too. We raced across, but stopped in South Bend. I had imagined South Bend to be deep in the heart of Indiana, that it was so close to Chicago surprised me. We visited the campus - saw Touchdown Jesus, the stadium, and conned a lady in the Art Museum into using her restrooms. We grabbed some lunch, I think Wendy’s, and drove on. But the stop was about an hour or so, and we could already tell that we wouldn’t make it to Akron in time.

Indiana stretched on for quite awhile. I had crossed each western state the hard way, in big stretches. In Indiana I was cutting across, but it still felt like a drive. We emerged eventually and bore down on Toledo. Just outside of Toledo we added gas (a sub 20mpg tank, I suspect because of getting lost in Chi) and soldiered on. I added a pair of energy drinks, maybe some gummi worms or something, while Micah got some granola bars and stuff.

In Ohio, they also have the roadside oases, they are a little more ‘mall’ like then I remember in Indiana; it’s got a food court, big screens with weather radars, travel time estimates, everything the family on the road needs. By this point, it was dusk, so we stopped at one to grab some dinner. Mickey D’s was the only thing open; our order was taken by a sassy but helpful lady; I finally had some Filet-O-Fish at $1.50 apeice. Mmm. I added some oil at some point here, just a single quart of the “Murray’s” off-brand motor oil which I picked up in Chicago. That’s a little mini-story:

On our way out of Chicago, I decided to buy another case of oil; there was a Murrays auto parts store (like a Schucks). When I hopped out of the van, an older black dude gave us his rap; he could fix our car, whatever was wrong, for real cheap. This was the type of guy the Venkatesh described in Gang Leader for a Day. I half expected that it could have been the same guy, Walter or something, but who knows? Anyways, the regular case of Penzzoil or Quaker State oil was going forlike $46, a little more than I wanted to pay, so I picked up the Murray’s for just $30, $2.50 a pint. All oil is essentially the same, right?

OK, after dinner, I let Micah drive, as I was getting a bit tired. Just back on the highway, Van Go stutters, accompanied by a loud ‘pop’ from the engine compartment. Micah noticed, but ignored it. I feared the worst, and didn’t say anything. Silent Magic. A few prayers in there,too.

It happened twice, the second time, Micah asked if that was normal. No, it wasn’t. Micah shrugged and drove on. About 30 miles down (and importantly, just like 3 miles past a rest stop) Van Go began rattling again, losing power momentarily as the engine skipped a beat. I became very away of the mileage markers; Van Go rattled on, popping about as frequently as the last few popcorn kernels. For my sanity, I order Micah to pull over to the road edge. It was 9 or 10pm at this point, very dark. Semi’s whizzed by. This wasn’t what I meant when I said I was on the road.

To Be Continued…

The first thing I noticed was, I get up early. Micah got up, maybe by 9, and his working cousin Alvin barely rolled up by like 9:30. Amazing. I think I was up around 630 or 7. This is the time that civilization wakes up, not those Neanderthal mid-morning wake up times.

So, what was the plan? Micah and I discussed this a bit. He had some place to go for lunch, then we were going to the White Sox-Red Sox game that evening. I didn’t have anything special on my agenda… see Wrigley, um, see the Loop? I really just wanted to drink and hang out doing fun things.

We went to Duncan Donuts first; Duncan Donuts is east coast for coffee. Everyone goes there, everyone complains about it. I supposed its not so different than Starbucks; except with your standard service-industry workers instead of aspiring doctoral candidates and a smattering of post-docs. Anywho.

We bought an all-day fun pass at (where else) the currency exchange around the corner. For some reason you can’t buy them from a ticket vending machine. The card was good for 24 hours, which meant we might be able to squeeze something out of it the next morning too. We hopped an Orange Line train for Wrigleyville.

It was a nice, sunny day and other people were visiting Wrigley too, now that the Cubs were on a road trip. Micah and I took pictures, checked out souvenirs. I was tempted to buy something, but I held firm. Micah asked around, to find out how much a tour cost… $35!?? We were both outraged. A Cubs curse has begun anew.

From here, we went to Micah’s old favorite Italian Sandwhich place, that turns out to be right across from the “Rock & Roll McDonalds.” We went there, I was expecting some local joint, it turned out to be the Red Robin of italian sandwhich shops. It was cheap food, however, for the classiness of the joint. I got some sort of beef/sausage grinder which I can barely choke down. I was unimpressed, although Micah seems to enjoyed his Combo just fine. We both made a visit to the facilities.

So, what else did we do? I had to visit a US Bank, which I knew was in the loop, and deposit some various checks I had from selling my stuff. On the way, we went to Millenium Park on the edge of the Loop. This is where the Bean is, and also there was some sort of terrorist I think, but that was a few years back. So, the bean, is this metallic silver… bean. It looks like an alien space ship. I keep expecting to see an M Night Shayamalan movie that features the bean, and pod people, and a clip of someone watching “The Day The Earth Stood Still” as a little tiny reference.

Anyway, we took more pictures and tried to look at pretty girls. Unfortunately, there weren’t alot out for some reason, mostly families, kids with braces, people in suits. No rollerblading bikini girls. Hmmm. As it turns out, the bean was very cool, and just like The Day… it didn’t have a visible seam and was highly reflective, so that some of my photos, you can turn them the other way and not tell which is real and which is the reflection.

It was hot this day, so I texted my friend Google for a 7-11. Bingo, two blocks away - I needed a slurpee bad. My thirst was slaked. Uh, what else? The Magnificent Mile, walked down that. I guess it was amazing, it was the same chain crap you see at K-Mart, just more expensive. Eventually it hit around 5pm, and I was beat from walking all day. We went to the southside, to watch the Sox.

So, although it’s the southside, I wouldn’t describe the neighborhood as dangerous, there just wasn’t much there. Empty buildings, parking lots, etc. No real businesses either, which was suprising. We (I) wanted to drink real bad, but first we had to buy tickets. We scored, because it looked like Monday evening game tickets could be had for $7/apeice. Unfortunately, it turned out the game was a “premier” game (rubber match between a good rival), and the cheapest seats possible were $35. Ouch. We forked it over, like suckers.

Anyway, I still wanted to drink, despite the stiff one we’d just had for the tickets. We walked east. Pretty quickly we were in the hood. Instead of neighborhood bar, there were multiple neighborhood liqour stores. There were panhandlers and other icky undesireables about our midst. We got uneasy glares from the cops. We hopped a bus (still on our “fun fare”) and retreated.

We traipsed through the Comisky parking lots, observing some sort of beanbag game that everyone plays while tailgating. We should have tailgated. Dang. We walked through. I wanted to crash a barbeque, but I couldn’t tell Micah wouldn’t have it, so eventually we found the ONE bar anywhere near Comiskey. I quickly downed two $4 old-style cans, and Micah a Miller Light. Whooo!

OK, so that drinks thing was a dud, and I couldn’t see myself getting tipsy on $7 beer served in plastic cups, so I had to squash it and see the game straight. Sporting events are perfect drinking occasions, and I was upset to lose this opportunity. I had been thinking alot about drinking, as you can tell.

Anyway, Micah asserted his calming effect on baseball games - after watching the Lester no-hitter as his only other live baseball game of the year, the (White) Sox pitcher threw six perfect innings. Micah sees that stuff, I never do. I should also note, Ken Griffey Jr. was traded to the White Sox and “played” Center Field. Griffey was my favorite player for a long time, and still is. But it sucks seeing the same dude who was the best non-arrogant-prick to ever play baseball to being old, fat, and slow? OK, thats mean, but he ain’t what he used to be. I judge myself getting old because I now bookend the career of a surefire Hall-of-Famer. Anyway, Micah had meet Griffey before - he was his assistant at a card show when they were both teenagers.

OK, so Chicago eventually blew it. I didn’t care too much about the result, as I secretly hoped both teams could lose. There were many pretty girls - all in White Sox attire - about, and I blame Micah completely for my inability to approach any of them. We hopped a train back up north. The orange line ran straight from 35th Ave to Bryn Mawr where Alvin lived, although it took awhile. When we got home, I checked that Van Go hadn’t been towed or stolen, and we settled in for bed.

I moved my van so that Barry and Mandy could squeeze out of the driveway, in doing so, I slammed Dave’s  monster truck, which he mentioned was alright. Neither vehicle seemed worse for the wear. After breakfast, Izzy and I headed back to Minnesota. We stopped in Blaine, and I watched more ultimate, but not for too long. Izzy was intrigued but he is not like me and wouldn’t be happy to watch all day. We continued on to Izzy’s place in central Minneapolis where we chatted and he made me lunch. I left, I don’t know, around 1pm or something?

It was east on I-90. I felt tired, sleepy, as I frequently was in the midday after eating. I stopped at a travel station and picked up some energy drinks. Monster M-80s have become my drink of choice, on sale, 3-for-5. I also dumped a few more quarts of oil in Van Go. I was getting low, two left from the case of 12 I had purchased in Bozeman. I drove on, but Van Go never felt quite right.

I called Jay - my cousin - in Madison, and asked if he’d like to get together for dinner. Yes! I had never really hung out with Jay much and only briefly met his wife - it had been something like 5 years now. I pulled in to their apartment in Madison after gassing up. I added more than 19 gallons to my twenty gallon tank, I’d got more than 400 miles out of that one for the first time. 20+ MPG, too.

At Jay’s place, his wife made some nice spaghetti, which we ate with abandon. Later on, Jay showed me around Madison, around the capital where he worked, around the campus area. We looked at fine girls and enjoyed some ice cream from a special icre cream place they have there. It was getting late, and I still had to make Chicago, so we cut the tour a little short; I drove Van Go off into the night.

In Illinois, the exit signs get all wonky. I paid a toll here, but who know how far it was to Chicago? I’d see a sign, O’hare, turn off here, and think I was close, but I was wrong. Trucks were everywhere, even this close to midnight. They raced each other, passing freely and often. I tried to stay out of the way. I paid another toll, and another, and eventually reached my exit, near Wrigleyville. I somehow got turned around, and suddenly my map made no more sense. I drove in each direction to get my bearings, something very difficult to do in Chicago, as they run street into street and avenue into avenue, and finally got re-tracked.

I parked off Magnolia Avenue, in the north side. I called Micah, and he came down from his cousin’s apartment to get me. I hadn’t seen him in more than a year, but it felt like it’d been just a week or something. We hugged it out, I grabbed my sleeping bag and headed upstairs. I was introduced to Alvin (Micah’s cousin) and promptly went to sleep.

About three or four blocks up York Avenue, something stupid happened. I was slowing down for a red light, when I accidentally bumped a guy in a Cadillac in front of me, pushing him forward into the intersection. Damnit! I had been glancing at my map trying to determine the best route. I sat there dumbly for a second, then followed the Caddy into a nearby parking lot to exchange info.

I asked the guy if he was hurt, and he responded by asking if I was “on my cellphone or something.” I wasn’t. I said that we should exchange information, but he asked me to call the police on my cellphone (which he hadn’t seen yet…). I could see this was going badly, so I called the police, and someone was dispatched to take an incident report.

I looked at the guy’s car, no damage I could see. Phew. He pointed out there was a few millimeters difference in the alignment of the trunk hatch. Damn, how’d he see that? As we waited, we exchanged info - the guy was named Manzar, and was from Ritchfield. He didn’t seem to take any pleasure that we had similar names. He asked what I was doing out from Oregon, and I told him about the family reunion. He said he wanted to call the police because he’d been burned before.

So, we sat there, and about fifteen minutes later an Edina police officer arrived. I was worried about this, because I’d heard that Edina police officers don’t look favorably on out-of-towners. We both handed over our license and insurance information. In my experience, this process takes about half an hour while the run your card, but it only took a few minutes. Maybe the don’t get as much info on out-of-state licenses, so it was quicker, or maybe the officer wanted to get out of there quickly. I could tell she was perturbed about having to visit the scene of a no-damage accident. She gave us case cards, reminded us that Minnesota was a no-fault state, and took off.

I wandered over to the nearby Caribou Coffee. I needed some. The girl working the counter was exceptionally pretty, I immediately had visions of picking her up and getting her to drive the rest of the way across country with me on a whim. Tall, blond, with a big bright smile. A real Minnesota girl. I made an effort to flash my Oregon ID as I paid for my coffee, which she dutifully noticed. “You’re here from Oregon?” she asked. Yup. Driving to Chicago on Sunday. “Well, I hope you have fun,” she said as she handed me my mug back. Alas, a quickie elopement and subsequent happily ever after life were not in the cards.

I headed north, and ran into construction near downtown. Man, what kind of place does weekend construction in the middle of their main freeway. Oh, it was for that bridge that collapsed about a year ago. Huh. I detoured.

After starting late, and getting into the accident, I got to Blaine right around 1030, as the first round games were finishing up. Seattle girls had won 15-0. I ran into CVH, my former college coach from the 1990’s. He said the Seattle girls looked “vulnerable” or something. I saw the Seattle boys finish off a 14-13 win in the hard cap against a dejected looking Colorado team. I stopped by and watched Luke’s mixed Eugene team a bit. As it turns out, each of those teams would win the tournament convincingly.

I was getting around noon, probably a bit late for the reunion, so I headed north again. I gassed up in Hinckley, got some Dairy Queen - a blizzard, a favorite yet frequently disappointing. I called Lisa Snodderly, her family was in Duluth for vacation, to tell them I was nearby, and “hi” and such. I made the turn at Finlayson and decided that Finley or Findlay would be a good baby name. I followed Jean’s subjective directions (you’ll pass two lakes, then a trail…) and after a few wrong turns, made it to the cabin.

It was much nicer than I expected. Toilet, shower, electricity, everything. My uncle Dave had just pulled up on his Motorcycle, I said hello to him. Rob, Izzy, Deb, Jon, a few others were sitting talking around the fire pit. Mandy and Barry and there new son was there. I wandered inside, Jean and Troy, along with Barb and Harjinder, my mother, Gulu, Kim and the other kids (Isabelle, Ella, Drew Ellen) were there playing. I hugged my mom, hugged Jean, shook Troy’s hand. Troy was shipping out to Iraq the next day, which was insane, but it sounded like quite an adventure. Troy is in his late forties now, so I doubted he’d be much in harms way, so it was okay. He’d be gone for a long while, however.

Jon and I went and grabbed this chair my mom had asked me to haul cross country to give to Jean. I was pretty sure Jean would appreciate it, and then wonder why we didn’t take it to her house in Minneapolis. This mattered because otherwise I would have left Van Go at Barbs and rode up and down with them, avoiding the entire Manzar incident. It turns out, Jean freaked out, saying that she had wanted the chair for years and years. That felt nice, the trip definitely worth it.

We just hung out the rest of the day and evening. We went swimming in the afternoon, a warm Minnesota lake. I swam way out, 100 yards or something, until the cold heart of the lake grabbed me and convinced me to swim back in before it was too late. Isabelle told me my hair looked better down, like when it was wet. What does she know!?

Later that night, Jon and I went in to town to grab some beer. The general store didn’t carry any, but they directed us to the bar around the corner. We walked in, it was pretty much the bar from Beautiful Girls, except less pretty. The bartender asked if we wanted a drink, and we said we wanted to buy some beer to go. She took us to a back room with a glass window where you could buy beer by the case. Some dudes walked in, the bartender lady got suspicious. Jon had to step outside and look as if he was waiting for someone. Strange, but we paid our money and had a twelver of PBR. We drove back to the cabin in Dave’s roadkill machine, his overhauled Chevy truck that was twice or three times the size of Van Go, had a 50-gallon drum in the tunneau as a gas tank and was painted in dark forest camo. That was Dave. We sat by the fire and drank some beers, I eventually retired and slept on the couch. I think there were dreams that evening, but who knows these things. I was out in the Minnesota wilderness, a place where people from small towns in that country think is a long way out.

This was the midpoint of my journey, a little over 2,000 miles at this point. Sleep.

I made the turn oat Finlayson

Soon after crossing the MN border, I stopped at a rest stop to use the restroom. While inside, an assistant offered up a family some free tickets to Valley Fair, a more or less year round fair in the Minneapolis area. We had gone as a family twenty years ago, to see Jimmy Cliff play and go on rides and such, but a thunderstorm cancelled that trip. They didn’t give us our money back either. Anyhow, I tried to finaggle the new tickets myself, as it now cost like $40 a day to do Valley Fair. No luck. I pressed on. I turned off the freeway and started a northeastery trek that would take me to Edina, MN, where my aunt lived. I passed the towns of Windom, Mankato, and some others, all fairly boring. Except a brief stop on a country road to add more oil, I didn’t stop.

I am at the point where I no longer check the oil, I just add more. I know I’m out - I’m always out. I added a quart, executed a quality 16 point U-turn on a 3-meter wide gravel road, and was off again.

I arrived in Minneapolis amid some awful construction on the freeways, and the 2 mile freeway jaunt on 494 took me about half an hour. I pulled off the freeway, up one avenue, took a few rights, and found myself in the parking lot of my aunt’s building. It was an older-style Edge City looking apartment. Surrounded by a boulevard and a garden, maybe out of the 60’s or 70’s, but I had been assured that it was indeed a nice condo. I could say for sure that Van Go was out of place here.

My aunt (Barb) came down and got me and let me in. When I got into the place, it looked like a hotel, but Barb’s unit was pretty nice. It was like an edition of MTV cribs but without the ‘boom boom’ room, and fewer TV’s. Her husband Harjinder was there, along with his neice Gulu, and their son (my cousin) Amar. Gulu had just arrived from Fresno where she had lived for a few years after coming from India, and now she was in Minneapolis looking to start her life here closer to family.

Amar was pretty quiet, which was both a relief and somewhat distressing. Amar has down syndrome and is usually very excited when family members come visit, which can be a bit much for me. So it was nice to talk with him at a slower pace and not have to ramp my energy level up, but at the same time, it didn’t really feel like “him”.

We all ate some cherries, strwaberries, and these crazy german cracker things on the outside deck, talked about this or that. I caught up on e-mail, work, etc, wrote in my blog. We looked at pictures of their other son Sam, who had just finished his masters at Oxford on the Rhodes Scholarship and would be flying in from D.C. later that evening.

I was something like jetlagged, and never really aware of what time it was. We watched the Olympics opening ceremony - very involved, and good, and I got Harjinder to talk more about Cricket, which he loves. I tried to get him to agree to start playing locally, just for fun, but I didn’t think he was up for it.

Sam arrived around 10 pm. He was very dashing looking, in his suit and all. He nearly convinced Harjinder to take a job in the world of politics. It was the first time he had seen his brother in nearly two years. He had dinner, but I can’t remember what it was. I crashed on the couch and that was that for the night.

It turns out, it (was) bike week in Sturgis, SD, which meant there were TONS of Harley-Davidson riders everywhere. I looked for my uncle Dave and Abby’s parents, Rachel and Clark, but never spotted them. It was a longshot anyhow. Occassionally a horde of them would enter the freeway together, 100’s at a time, gumming things up a bit, but overall it wasn’t too bad. They drove courteously in general.

I pulled in to Rapid City, navigating a few freeways to get downtown. It was still early (9am?) but hot. I parked Van Go downtown and started walking around looking for a good breakfast spot. I ran into some college looking girls and asked if they new somewhere good. They mostly drew a blank, but one (apparently the host) recommended Wal-Mart. I asked if they knew a good cafe. “Oh, they have really good coffee there too,” she replied. Hmm. The slogan of this town was “Real America, Up Close.” Apparently so.

I walked a few more blocks east on St. Joseph’s and ran into a diner-style breakfast joint. Perfect. Diane’s, or some similar name. It was mostly full of bikers but I got a table anyhow. I chatted with two bikers seated across from me - real estate flippers from Boston. They had taken off their bandanas and donned reading glasses, and talked about the markets to each other. They were similar to many bikers in this way.

I finished quickly, and set out for a internet cafe to do some blogging, e-mailing, etc. I felt I had a ton of time to make it to Sioux Falls for my couch surf. So I sat at Alt. Fuel, a nice coffee shop. I bought a T-Shirt as a gift for a friend, and drank their whiskey-and-vanilla flavored house coffee. It was tasty enough, and it got strangely better tasting and easier to drink the more I drank. Huh.

I hit the road, headed east, still on I-90. It passed 90 degrees outside, probably in the triple digits. I rolled on. I saw signs for Wall, SD, home of some famous drug store. Of course - Wall Drug, apparently from a town called Wall. Perhaps it was vice-versa. I imagined myself visiting, the first tourist interested in something so banal. Nope. The place was packed with (of course) bikers, tens of thousands of chromed out Harley’s. I visited the “drug store” - mostly cheap crap. I bought a Washington State refridgerator magnet for $1 and moved on, gassed up. Wall was also the location of the turn-out to go through the Badlands National Park, so I headed on 240 south to that.

The Badlands had been on my ‘too do’ list for a while, but also a place I thought Van Go feared to tread. 100+ degree weather might not sit well with him. Whatever. The badlands were amazing, as you’ll see in my pictures. The rest of South Dakota is plain and flat, unfeatureful, but at the Badlands, the land drops off the face of the earth into red, angry crags. I drove through badland canyons, over windswept ridges, all the while dodging bikers and such. I spent about 90 minutes driving the 30 or so mile stretch of badlands roads. Unlike Devils Tower, I didn’t buy any souvenirs, but took alot of pictures. I asked a scandanavian tourist to take a picture of me, she did so poorly.

I hit the road again on I-90 a few hundred miles from Sioux Falls. The time zone changed again, throwing me off, and suddently I probably wouldn’t get in to SF until 9pm, a little later than comfortable, especially because my couch surf wasn’t really confirmed just yet. Nonetheless, I stopped in Chamberlain, SD and dipped in the Missouri River. It was warm, and muddly. Apparently it’s called The Big Muddy. Who knew. The swim was good - my first real bath a few days ago in Seattle, and I hit the road again, racing past thunderstorms in the early evening sun.

I got ahold of Kyle - my couchsurf host - finally and got directions to his place. It was in east Sioux Falls, suburban heaven, his parents place. They were having a garage sale with the neighbors, every home had an American flag out front, well manicured lawn. I parked, but had to move to make way for Kyle’s brothers boat. Yup.

Kyle was pretty cool, a future grad student who’d just graduated from the local university, to study public health or get is MD, it was hard to keep straight in my head. We went to a bar (Monks) in downtown Sioux Falls after a quick tour of Sioux River Falls. It was too dark to really get any pictures, I didn’t have my camera with me anyhow.

Monks was cool, they had tasty beer from around the world for cheap, and we ran into some of Kyle’s friends and chatted and drank for awhile before heading back to the house around midnight. I passed out pretty much instantly, the morning arriving just moments after my head hit the pillow…

I woke up again at about 5:30, and it was light out. I peeked outside my tent, and the sun was not up, so I decided to rush my clothes on, grab my video and camera, and then jumped in Van Go and raced to the visitors center at the base of the tower. I threw on my hiking boots, and proceeded to hike around the Tower Loop trail that circled Devils Tower as close as possible.

The only problem was the visitors center (and parking lot) were located on the west side of the tower, and sunrise as you know begins in the east. It was about one mile around to the other side, so I hoofed it, walking briskly around to the eastern end of the trail.

I found a good spot, a scenic view from the east, and set up my camera, and put it into time-lapse mode and let it run. I finished less than a minute before the sun peeked over the horizon. As the video recorded, I took some photographs and mostly sat there. It was beautiful and quiet. None of the campers were awake, no bikers were open-throttling their Harley’s, just the chirps of birds, the crunching of branches under the feet of white-tailed deer, the sounds of nature. I sat on the bench for most of half an hour, contemplating the universe as I had the previous night.

The Tower turned a bright orange as sunlight crested over the hills yonder, and then a dull grey as the sun hid behind a whispy puff of cloud. I took down my kit, and hiked another 2/3rds a mile further around the tower, snapping more pictures. I encountered a family of deer, and tried to maneuver for a picture, but I was upwind of everything in this direction so I don’t think it ever could have happened.

I arrived back to the visitors center, hopped in Van Go, and rolled back down to the campsite and packed up. I had an itinerary for the day: Breakfast, in Sundance, WY or Rapid City, SD; to drive through the Badlands, and then arrive in Sioux Falls, SD (on the Minnesota border) where I had a couchsurf lined up. More on that later.

Pictures from today are here.

Anyway, I chatted with some people at the hostel in Bozeman. The first guy to wake up told me he had just gotten out of jail the day previous, 6 months or something on a DUI. He left early, on a bike, to look for a new job I think. While I showered, a german kid made a delicious tasting omelet, but I didn’t have any. He was a transfer student from Berlin who arrived in Bozeman but didn’t have an apartment lined up yet. I bid farewell to them all.

I drove like mad to the east, hoping to arrive at Devils Tower at a reasonable time - daylight, mostly. I ran at 70 most of the way. My friend the service sanity light was again with me. I kept an eye on the oil gauge, which held steady like a champion for quite a ways. Between the 5W-40 we added in Warm Springs and the oil change, I was confident Van Go would hold out.

It was hot again, in the nineties, as Montana stretched on forever and ever. As the road passed through reservation lands, the country seemed worse than ever, a never ending expanse of land that only the most foolish would attempt to pass.

I passed Columbus, passed Billings, past the reservation town of Crow Agency. Eventually, I arrived in Sheridan, Wyoming, a nice little town of about 40,000. I hopped off to the I-90 Business Loop, and saw that Sheridan was America’s Best Western Town. I liked it, and the people seemed friendly. I picked up gas - $3.97/gallon - at a Holliday quick-center, then continued down the Business Loop to pick up I-90 again, when I realized I left my glasses at the fuel-up. I stopped in the second quick stop, considering buying new ones, but decided I could burn two miles worth of in-town gas to go back and find them. I did so, but they weren’t there. I looked in my van, didn’t see them. I went inside and looked again. I vowed not to buy new glasses, but as I climbed in the van, I noticed them dropped underneath the rear seat. Dummy. I should remove that rear seat anyhow, it’s just taking up space, but my only option would be to deposit it on the side of the highway. Probably not a bad option, but not one I like. It allows me to pick up extra bodies, should I choose to do so. I’ll definitely get rid of it in Chicago.

Anyway, I had gas, and I had my glasses, and felt good. It was getting on in the day, so I pushed it harder to make time. The Wyoming landscape was unassuming, dry, with big long gentle hills. I was flying, passing everyone in sight, leaving nothing in the rear-view. Even better news lay ahead, as I spotted rain clouds in the distance. I had been so hot, I would have killed to be rained upon - although I feared what raining at the Tower might be like. As it was, I-90 bent around the gathering storms (even a few lightning strikes) and I was touched by a few drops at most.

Ever since Sheridan, I had seen an increasing number of motorcycles - Harley Davidson’s - on the road. Bike dudes, some with their biker babes in tow. They all kind of looked the same. Beer belly, shades, black leather or sleaveless shirt. The biker babes all wore jeans and chain-smoked. I past them all with ease. I reached Moorcraft, WY, a puddle of nothing town that featured a dry grocery store - no beer. This was around 4pm. I gang of bikers hung out at the gas pump, filling up on $3.50 gas on sale. I picked up some Cup-O-Noodles and turned on to Highway 14, a one-lane road through the wooded land of northeast Wyoming.

Having felt good about my oil situation, that suddenly changed while climbing a long, slow hill. The gauge started jumping, but more importantly, there weren’t any buildings, or people, in sight, nor were there any signs advertising Devils Tower - a national park. I was concerned that I was going to break down going in the wrong direction, a severe embarrassment. I pulled into a country shop about 20 miles down the road to confirm I was going the right direction, but planned to ignore the oil situation until I got to the park, which should only have been about another seven miles away. I was blasting the stereo.

The friendly gentleman who ran the store - he was out front drinking with some buddies, put me on my way (I was on track), and as I backed up, I heard how loud and clanky the engine was. I stopped and added two quarts. The proprieter mentioned “Yeah, I thought it sounded a bit rough” as I drove away, Van Go responding with a friendly purr now that he was slaked.

I was now on the path to Devils Tower, but was concerned that it wasn’t in sight. I dodged bikers. I crested hills. Finally, it appeared from nowhere, upon me like a beast. I pulled past the KOA campground at the entrance to the National Park. The looked to be parting pretty hard there, but I pulled forward and drove up to the visitors center, right at the base of the Tower. The visitors center was decent, but didn’t have much. I bought some postcards and headed back down to the campsite.

I set up my tent and looked for other young people. No dice, nothing but families with young kids and bikers. I tried asking a group for some hot water for my Cup-O-Noodles, but got an icy response. I was the only solo person in the camp. Worthless Cup-O-Noodles. Some people had power, light, running water… I didn’t have crap, not even beer. Well, I almost had nothing, which gave me an idea.

There are about 15 miles of trails or something at Devil’s Tower, and I hiked up one… it was about 1 miles up, then another “Red Beds Trail” for about 1 mile back to the to Tower Loop trail, which went right up against the monument. I walked through a prairie dog park, across the road, and up towards the monument. There I ran into a rock - it was like, smooth sandstone, looked like a flood ran through it. A great tan marble in the otherwise rough landscape. I climbed up onto it, and looked onto the valley below. There was a cave, I could have gone in there, but I was concerned there would be a rattlesnake in there, so I climbed the chute. I looked down upon the valley below, and enjoyed that time. I spent about half an hour there. I could hear voices from all about the park, the park rangers talking to visitors above at the center, bikers on the road, people at the campsite yelling at their kids, everyone. It introduced a kind of strange paranoia, like I wasn’t supposed to be hearing all of this at once.

As the sun set, I snapped a few pictures of the shadow of the tower over the valley below. It was an experience. I began to wander back down the rock and the trail. I wanted to hike the entire system, but it was getting dark, I was getting tired, and I didn’t feel in condition to hike another four or five miles. So I walked back down the hill. I saw a badger, or some sort of furry mammal, saunter along the trail ahead of me.  I saw something move to my side. I froze. There was a deer, not more than 20 yards away, calmly chewing on some shrubbery. Truth be told, it wasn’t much different than a giant prairie dog, but it was still cool to see. Real Nature, Up Close!

I stood there in awe a moment, and then quietly walked past it. It was aware of me, but didn’t care, I think. I went past through Prairie Dog Town again, swatting away mosquitoes. At the campsite, I sat down to write, but didn’t have any internet access or power, so I tried to write on paper by dusklight, but that didn’t last long. Around 10pm I hopped into the tent and settled in to sleep.

People showed up through the night, with their car lamps on, which kept me up. I didn’t sleep especially well. I decided, rather than hang out the next day and hike all the trails, I would wake up early and catch sunrise and then head out afterwards, and I dutifully set my alarm for 4:30 and eventually reached slumber…