While the hour is late, it’s also that quiet time when writing comes easiest for me, perhaps because both the guard and the self-critic have nod off. So, I’ll take a stab at bringing closure to the trip. (Obviously, if there is another entry above this one, I didn’t quite finish!) I've now been home for ten days.

Final statistics:

Total miles: 8969 miles
Gas consumed: 364.61 gallons (avg: 24.6 mpg - not bad since it's 19mpg city/26mpg hwy)
Gas cost: $822.75 (avrg: $2.25/gallon, premium all the way - "Baby" requires it...)
Road-kills: none
Road-kill close calls: 2 deer (OR), 1 box-turtle (TX), 1 bunny (MT)
Insects killed: thousands
Insect bites: none (!)
Speeding tickets: none
Warnings by State Troopers: 1 (Ohio and it was SO bogus: 71 in a 65 zone!)
Flat tires: none
Highest speed: 110 mph (CA, NM, AZ)...and still slower than the girls in the VW Jetta with Manitoba plates
Items lost: driving glove (right), French Open hat - obviously, I don't know where or else they wouldn't be bloody LOST!
Items left behind and recovered: journal (NV), blue shirt (MT), white shirt (OR), and back-pack (IA)

First, I want to thank all the old friends -- and former strangers from Globalfreeloaders.com -- who offered to and/or hosted me at various stops. It was great seeing you, however briefly. There is a Chinese saying that "fish and guests stink after three days", so I'm sure that we are both glad it didn't get tested. There is also a Latino saying that "my house is your house". Invoking the Brazilian part of me, I offer my hospitality to you in Philadelphia.

If you are here for the first time, this narrative is linear and so it should really be read starting at the beginning, which is, by date, the entry of May 7th. (There is another reason, which you'll see there.) I can’t promise that this approach will increase your enjoyment, but it will, at least, explain things better. It won’t offend me if you don’t: there is no Big Brother watching, no electronic “Kilroy was here” to show your tracks.

My intention was to have each entry be able to stand alone, short stories within a collection on the same theme, but, as I have stated more than once, my best writing is neither prose nor done under deadline. I also had envisioned writing a post every night. That didn’t happen either. I wish that I could say that my night-time hours were a choice between “experiencing” and writing about "experiencing”, but that’s not true. Some nights I was just physically and psychically tired and wanting nothing more than the mindless distraction of a bad movie. (Aside: one night I found a Canadian show on Iowa public TV called "The Red Green Show" that was absolutely hilarious. The best bit was a Men Anonymous club (like AA) whose members started every meeting by saying in unison: "I'm a man. (pause) But I can change. (medium pause) If I have to. (long pause) I guess.")

So, aside from a few exceptions, the original intent failed miserably: the entries are a hodge-podge of the pedestrian speckled with occasional glimpses of the marvelous, to which I rarely did justice. (If the goal of good writing is to have the reader “see” what the writer saw, these entries are like a pair of smeared prismatic lenses: you get an idea of what you should be seeing, but it’s not quite what you see.) Ironically, the imperfections result in a more honest reflection of the trip (and life) as being beyond best intentions and plans. Or at least MY life and MY plans.

There was also the issue of “the voice”. (Don’t you have something better to do than read this?) The one in these postings wanders all over, trying to be amusing, entertaining, and insightful at the same time. Considering that I rarely achieve any of them by themselves, Heaven knows why I thought I could achieve all three at once. And in a quasi-public forum at that!

I also didn’t figure out how to upload photo files properly until late in the trip, so they are crammed into those few days when I had access to a high-speed internet connection. If you think watching golf or shopping for clothes with a daughter feels like an eternity, try uploading photos over a motel dial-up… (Actually, I enjoy going shopping with mine. Weird, no?) The photos themselves won’t appeal to everyone (and shouldn’t), and there are probably too many of some places and not enough of others. I avoided most of the real tourist/obligatory shots, since you’ve all seen those in postcards. However, had I thought about it earlier and planned better, I would have photographed all the one-room post-offices and state border “Welcome” signs I encountered. The former reminded me that there is still a human-scale America between the Coasts; the latter would have been a nice memento/reminder of the 23 states I passed through. Fortunately, they are in my head, as are mental snapshots of scenes and places that went by too fast and to which I could not U-turn quickly enough (or at all).

I also didn’t master handling a camera with one hand while driving, but I don’t think I’ll find a course that teaches that. The results would have been better if the image on the little display didn’t wash-out in daylight and force me to either to put the camera to my eye to use the view-finder or guess the composition/framing. I usually chose the latter, unless the road was REALLY clear and straight, which it was in the Southwest.... but not on the Pacific Coast Highway. And, while a small digital camera had distinct advantages, I wish that I had brought along my 35 mm Nikon and the 2 ¼ inch format Rolleicord. (Photography is an early and oft-neglected love.) Next time.

One last thing, and it's about typos, omissions, syntax, tense consistency, etc. Numerous times since returning, I have been within one mouse-click from editing/polishing the entire blog. However, despite the mortification of allowing a less-than-perfect "product" to make it past my inspection, I've decided, for the sake of preserving "historical" accuracy, to let it be. Please treat it with the kindness reserved for first-drafts. (Also remember that English is my third language and learned from "scratch" as a teenager.  Thus, while I am here long distance and speak well Engrish, I times some write not so good...)

Well, that's it for the apologies/explanations.

The questions/objectives I posed to myself at the beginning of this blog were about the transforming power(s) – if any – of such a journey at this point in time in my life. I saw sights that were profoundly affecting in their moment, but I am not naïve enough to take for granted that their effect is permanent. I also met people whom I'd like to know much better and, thus, rue the current/temporary(?) physical distance. In recent times, I’ve leaned towards a less conscious/active approach, not force-marching things toward a particular outcome, but, instead, letting all the influences on the subject percolate until a consensus, decision, or direction rises to the top. (There is, I am sure, an Eastern philosophy or term for this approach or I can make one up: “Divining The Essential Through Minding Unmindfulness”. Hey, "Guru" or "Buddha"!...now that's job with great perks and a cheap wardrobe..)

The presence (or absence) of transformation applies, principally, to the experience of meeting Kevin Gray, the young Navaho in Arizona, and its impact on the choices I make next. While it was not a “sign” on a par with Emperor Constantine seeing a cross in the sky and converting himself (and Rome) to Christianity, it did put a human face to the statistics, and a very affecting one at that, especially his son’s. It’s still early in that “bubbling up” process, but I already know that my path will include activities directed at Native Americans and further involvement with Kevin and his family, both of which I have initiated.

For all of my cynicism -- real and pretend --, to paraphrase Justice Steward about pornography, I may not be able to define “dignity”, but I know it when I experience it. For all of his age and circumstances – not despite – Kevin had it, with the natural unawareness that helps define it. Help offered to a man with dignity is not charity: it’s friendship and a recognition of brotherhood and sharing. Help offered to a people with dignity is not “charity”: it’s responsibility and, in the case of Native Americans, also redemption. Enough said.

Thus, “How was your trip?”, which I’ve been asked often, is like “How are you?”, a question where the answer can be brief and superficial ("Fine, thank you.”) or lengthier and deeper than the questioner really wanted ("I just got laid off, the tumor is inoperable, and I can't program my Tivo"). A better question would be “Are you glad you did it?”, to which the answer would be an unqualified “Yes”.

What I learned most is about how little I know about the physical world – not that the world of ideas is my oyster. I can’t contrast and compare the various geologic terrain seen because I barely know the difference between a rock and a hard place. (It doesn't stop me from collecting rocks from places visited, but I can’t tell you what they are.) I can’t describe, with a name, the grove of trees in Oregon that astonished me because of their uniformity in stature and spread: I don’t know an oak from a maple from a chestnut from a locust (the tree, not the insect). I saw cultivated fields that could have been barley, wheat, soybean, or even VERY young corn -- I do recognize a corn-stalk when it’s as high as an elephant’s eye – and easily misidentify them. It’s very humbling. It also reminds of how much I once knew about those things growing up in a rural area of Brazil and hunting/fishing/playing in the woods. But it would useless, even if I remembered, since the flora and geology are different. And, of course, it was in Portuguese.

I saw man-made structures that were grotesque yet mesmerizing (Las Vegas strip – the casinos, not a floor-show), inspiring (pioneer cabins), absurd (world’s tallest thermometer, 134 ft. in Baker, CA, next to a Big Boy's restaurant off I-15), astounding (Hoover Dam), mysterious (any of the Ancestral Puebloan ruins), pathetic (highway memorial crosses – in the original sense of evoking pathos), self-aggrandizing (Biltmore House), self-aggrandizing AND ostentatious (Hearst Castle), tacky (too numerous to name!)…the list could go on and on. We are certainly a species that likes to make its mark everywhere and in every way.

Of the natural world seen, I wouldn’t know what to start including. It’s truly an immense and diverse country. Some of the roads I traveled followed Lewis and Clark’s voyage of exploration from St. Louis to the Pacific, which started in May 1804, so there were many places celebrating that bicentennial. Reading journal entries matching my days on the road gave me an appreciation for their accomplishments that I hadn’t had before. It was also an experience to be in certain places and see what they saw. Or how it’s changed. I have been an urbanite for so long that it took time to adjust to some of the sights, particularly the open spaces in the Southwest and across the Dakota plains. Before this trip, when my mind needed a refuge from urban sensory overload, it would conjure up Scottish Highland scenery from my frequent visits there. I have already felt the addition of images from this country to that stock.

All in all, the best question might be....no question at all. I’d like to not make a judgement or measure the trip as a whole. At the risk of sounding “New Age” (which makes me gag), I experienced it as a series of moments, some terribly lonely, others as exhilarating as anything I have ever felt. That’s a lesson for me, accustomed to evaluating everything with an eye towards drawing a conclusion or attaching a label. (It doesn’t mean that I’ll be less judgmental, just a little better acquainted with non-judgement!)

Lastly, the trip was a “survey course”, a way of covering a lot of territory with the intent of returning to some. But, as it occurred to me on a particularly scenic section of road in Idaho along the Lochsa River, I'd like to be in one of the slow cars next time...and in the passenger seat from time to time. Happy trails!

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Below are the last photos from the trip. (NOTE: "clicking" anywhere on a photo will enlarge it for a better view.)


A belated photo just received from Janet and Gary's wedding (other photos in the May 30 entry), where I am : a) officiating, b) reading them a contract about chores and control of the TV remote control, or c) giving them marital advice (!). I know a lot of you reading can accept me doing "A" or "B", but not "C" (the correct answer).


I was very fortunate to find a poem that was short, fitting, and by a Chinese woman poet in a little anthology called “Women Poets of China”, co-edited by Kenneth Rexroth. I read it and then added my remarks.

The author of the poem, poetess Kuan Tao-Sheng (1262 - 1319 C.E.) was married to Chao Meng-Fu, a leading calligrapher and painter of Chinese history. (She herself was known as a calligrapher and painter of bamboos, orchids and plum blossoms.) She wrote the poem to her husband when she found out that he was intending to take a concubine. It is said that he was so moved by it that he did not.)

Here it is:


Married Love

You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold a figure again of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one bed.

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"I felt both honored and humbled when Janet and Gary asked me to share their special day by imparting some words of advice for their life together. 

In fact, I felt twice humbled: first, by having been perceived as having something valuable to impart and second, by the task of trying to live up to that perception.


The truth is that there are probably as many guides for a happy marriage as there are diets for losing weight. Yet, most of the advice for achieving either goal is familiar and comes from common sense.


Just listen again to the “action verbs” in the “Charge to the Couple” and their declaration to each other: CONFIDE, LAUGH, ENJOY, SHARE, LOVE, CHERISH, RESPECT, PROVIDE, PROTECT, COMFORT, TRUST.


If the advice is so obvious – and all marriage vows contain some or most of those verbs – what makes it so hard for them to be followed?


Well, just like in the work Janet and I share within Human Resources, the key in having a great hire (or a great spouse, in this case), is in selecting the right person in the first place, the person who is made of the right "clay".


Therefore, you have each already done the most difficult part. You have chosen each other as being made of the right clay to be your life partner. 

And that’s my advice to you: that if you remember always what made you choose each other, keeping those verbs active will become second-nature."

I went to Little Big Horn, site of the 7th Cavalry's defeat, because I grew up with the popular "white" view of the event -- a terrible tragedy, a massacre -- and I wanted to see whether there was a balanced presentation that reflected not just the "how" but the "why", the provocations and betrayals by the government. While there is now a memorial -- off to the side -- to "explain" the Indian side, I was disheartened by two things: the tone of the Ranger's talk NOT being balanced and still conveying the soldiers-as-heros without taking the "teachable moment" to educate about treaty-breaking and outright theft of land by our government AND the fact that the audience/visitors I saw were disinterested in that part, as evidenced by how few went over to the Indian memorial.

On the path to the memorial tot he 7th Cavalry, a warning about rattlesnakes. Kind of took away my enthusiasm to walk around....

The 7th Cavalry soldiers killed at Little Big Horn are buried in a mass grave just behind where I stood to take this photo at Custer Battlefield

Last Stand Hill: the markers are where the cavalrymen fell. It's so peaceful there now that it's hard to imagine how it must have that day in late June with the smoke and shouts from both sides....

Another view from the highest point of Last Stand Hill toward the markers where the soldiers fell.

Lining the inside wall surface of the carved-out mound that is the memorial to the Indian side of the story of Custer's "massacre" (you can tell whose side I'm on...), are panels with quotes by both participants and their descendants. The memorial is fairly recent -- I think from the mid-1990s -- and a reminder for balance and away from the heroic-white-soldiers-massacred-by-Injuns story that is part of the popular image. (Click photo to enlarge and read.) Sitting Bull was already old at the time of this event.

Inside the round, earth-mounded enclosure is this metal sculpture showing warriors in silhouette galloping. The open metal-work is very effective against the background and sky-line.

Another view of the Native American memorial sculpture.

Detail of the memorial sculpture. The colored objects are ribbons and such that visitors have tied to the metal.

Devil's Tower, WY. It does just stick out the ground like that! It's sacred to Native Americans and played a non-speaking part in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

Another view, but it's tough to show the scale of the thing.


And, finally, the last photo taken during the trip.

Those driving I-95 south into the Carolinas know about "South of the Border", a road-site stop where every trinket ever made in the Far East is available. "Wall Drug" in South Dakota is its western-themed counterpart, though it defies me how a 15 ft tall growling animatronic T-Rex dinosaur from the movie "Jurassic Park" fits in. It's a huge place that extends for a city-block of connecting store-fronts hiding a warren of shops selling T-shirts to tomahawks to taffy. If it's cheap, cheaply-made, tacky, and could be a souvenier, they have it by the dozen, in all sizes, and in both your least (and most) favorite colors.

The strangest thing I encountered there was actually in a Mexican-food restaurant. I make a distinction from "Mexican" restaurant because ALL of the wait-staff, with the exception of one stereotypical hard-boiled waitress, was Eastern European girls in their late teens or early twenties whose English was, surprisingly, poor. The hard-boiled waitress informed me that the girls were from Moldavia (!), Germany, and Rumania. (I had to ask her to take my order after I had trouble being understood by both the hostess and a waitress she called over to help. They had trouble with "Taco salad to go".) I left there wondering how a half-dozen young women from those countries ended up in the middle of South Dakota. Are wait-staff jobs so undesirable to locals? Did the young people from the area get out as soon as they turned eighteen and could buy a bus ticket to the Big Apple? I'll never know because one stop at Wall Drug is enough for this lifetime.

This is a view of the back entrance to the Historic Bullock Hotel where I stayed in Deadwood a couple of weeks ago. (In the HBO series, the closest-to-heroic character is Seth Bullock, a real merchant of that wild early period.) It was more interesting to me than the front on Main Street, where every other building houses a bar/casino. I'd rather imagine that street as it was in the 1870s and in series: unpaved, rutted, muddy (or dusty). In other words, not prettified for the bus-trade tourists (mostly Canadians, I was told). Being so close to Sturgis,SD, where tens of thousands of bikers congregate for 2 weeks in July to party-hardy, Deadwood gets some of the over-flow and, thus, also has shops catering to that trade. Aside from leather wear of all sorts, particularly the unmentionable kind, there are also T-shirts with tasteful slogans like: "I'm His Bitch" and "Hog-Tie and Ride Me".)

Wild Bill Hickock's tombstone. While the saloon where he was shot and died burned down (with much of Deadwood) a few years after his death, there is a reconstruction of that section of the building inside the current building -- which is (surprise!) a bar with slot machines. There is even an "X" marking the spot where he fell mortally wounded. (He was shot from behind while playing poker.)

Checking out of the hotel on Sunday morning, I ran into Calamity Jane on her morning constitutional. Considering the hour, she was pretty sober... I asked her chose any pose she liked. I had seen Wild Bill on Saturday night on Main street being ignored by the blue-haired ladies on their way to the slot machines . It's tough to compete with one-armed bandits...

She actually looks a bit like the Calamity in the photos in the local museum. It was touching to read letters about how proprietary and understanding the townspeople were about her in later life, a drunken has-been often found sleeping on the wooden sidewalks.

Calamity outlived Hickock by decades and was buried in a grave next to his in the cemetery high above the town. (They weren't lovers, just friends.) The cemetery has a host of colorful characters in residence in addition to Bill and Calamity. In design, it reminded me of Pere Lachaise in Paris - which has Jim Morrison, Chopin's heart, Abelard and Heloise, and every French literary figure you could name.