as seen on tv

greybull is a tiny, lonely town, east of cody, wyoming.

it seems to exist solely as overflow for when all the hotels are full in cody. they have an empty street for their main businesses and a marquee stands in front of a pizza joint which reads

"murphy's law rules greybull."

i drove my tired self to one of their motels and paid way too much for one of the few available rooms left in town. humorously enough, the motel was part of the 'budget host' motel chain. the phone number on their tiny bars of shower soap listed a phone number that any drug dealer would love to have: 1-800-bud-host

there was a paul newman movie on the cable that looked like the film that the simpsons must have parodied in that episode when bart goes to france. paul newman is a sports reporter who gets sent to paris to cover fashion after he gets in trouble with the boss' wife. some pretty witty stuff ensues.

i washed the camping grime off myself and used the large counter space available to prepare my first attempt at manifold cooking with the hybrid electric car. although i had cooked plenty on the manifold of my old car, i wasn't sure if it would work the same with the hybrid. tons of aluminum foil later, i had a nice marinade of soft tofu in a mix of snow peas, onions and shitakes all bathing in a teriyaki sauce. i was dismayed to later learn that the engine never really got hot enough to cook this all the way through. fortunately, it worked pretty well as a slightly warmed up meal, but not as satisfying as it could have been. it's possible that i just didn't choose a section on the engine block which was hot enough, but it really seemed to me that there just wasn't anyplace warm enough in the entire engine bay. once these suckers start running on plutonium, cooking is going to be a lot easier to do when taking road trips.

being the easternmost attraction in wyoming, devil's tower was the direction i pointed my car towards after a quiet night in greybull. i quickly learned that there is absofuckinglutely nothing on i-90 between yellowstone and devil's tower. the only exception was when i drove past a herd of wild horses. i kept thinking that there was no way this herd could have possibly been wild, but the more i watched them, the more i realized that there was no way anybody could have possibly owned this herd.

fortunately, devil's tower is a pretty impressive sight, even without all its spielbergian ufo glory. the thing i found the funniest about it is that since nobody is quite sure what geologic anomaly caused devil's tower, the only slogan they could come up with for the park was "america's first national monument!" which, although accurate, doesn't really strike inspiration in the hearts of americans.

south dakota began with a snowy night at a hostel in deadwood, the town where wild bill hickok, wyatt earp and calamity jane kicked up some shit many years ago. it's still a gambling and drinking town these days and all the original buildings are pretty much still standing, despite its history of the occassional devastating town fire. i went to the saloon where bill was shot to death over a poker hand (a pair of aces and a pair of eights) and wandered through the memorabilia. these days, the saloon is now sort of a museum/bar/casino where they have all these cool artifacts to look at from the black hills gold rush days, and you can get drunk at the same time! it's kind of like a museum opening that has been happening every day... for a couple hundred years.

i stayed the night in deadwood at the penny motel, a tiny hostel/hotel at the end of the main strip of casinos. the penny motel has a couple renovated rooms available to house wayward travellers. there are four bunks per room and a tiny bathroom for all to share. their common area includes a nice little kitchen with a fairly large dining table as well as a tv room and an internet computer tucked away in a little red velvet lined closet. the other two travellers i met there had just quit their jobs in south carolina and decided that they wanted to travel cross country. the surfboards and kayaks on top of their vanogan looked a little wacky in the snow of south dakota, but it seemed like they were having a good time.

having been raised in california for pretty much most of my life, i never fail to get completely flabbergasted when things fall from the sky. i'm always so bewildered when i'm encountered by any type of weather and that night, it was snowing. the snowflakes drifted down from the cold and made their tiny little touchdowns on my hair, face and car. it was so pretty. the guy behind the desk sighed when i mentioned the snow.

"eh... bad for business," he told me as we watched god's cold dandruff land on the ground.

<05.11.04>

previous rant |newer rant | current weblog