21 May 2003 09:24
kyle and i were recently arrived in the states, struggling to recover from the brutal interrogations of a US border guard who obviously didn't like us. this may no longer be the land of opportunity, but it wouldn't have killed her or any of them to at least smile a friendly welcome to their fellow countrymen! makes me go all warm and patriotic inside, just thinking about it.so i'm not real keen on the idea of marching off to war to die for lovely compatriots like her, or bill clinton. i would say that the benefits of dying for people who appreciate it though probably outweigh the negatives. yet another not so subtle reminder from God that i am marching off to war for a bunch of unappreciative bratty sinners. i can hear God now, "awwww, poor baby. ... SUCK IT UP AND GET TO WORK BECAUSE I SAID SO!!" i'm not very good at my job, but i don't think he's going to let me resign anytime soon. hey, at least i have good job security.
so K and i managed to get back in the country. we headed east on US Rt. 2. lovely road. straight. not really flat, kind of a bumpy flat. with random snowcapped hills parked in the middle of nowhere. yeah, and train tracks. i got a picture from the passenger side out the driver side of a train against the mini-mountain. i can't remember whether that one came out or not. it might have blurred. oh well. so we're on US2. we head east for a good while (yeah, i know that's the wrong direction, but we did have to head home some time. it's almost painful to me to think about it. all my life i've lived with the truth that west is good, all while living on the east coast. but when i get west of the good stuff (eg los angelos), it's truthfully a painful concept to think that east is good. makes the country seem too small all of a sudden and spawns a sudden desire to go north). after heading east for a while, we headed west for a bit (that was kyle's fault for ignoring his navigator). then we said goodbye to US2 and headed south into the deepening gloom. we didn't really spare much time for saying goodbye, though, because i think we were still arguing over who's fault it was that we missed the turn in the first place (it was his).
so that was US2. i don't know, it held a charm. we'd ridden on it on our way into kalispell, then over to glacier national park. it's the northern most US route in that area of the states. when i think about roads that go long distances, i'd love to set out and travel from one end to another. if we'd had an extra day, kyle and i could have gone back to KS via salt lake city, and traveled on I70 from UT to central CO. then i would have been on the entire length of I70. i've never really felt the urge to drive US66, because everybody's done that, and it's really not my era. US50 is, and i've spent a fair amount of time on 50. it's weird to think when kyle and I rode on 50 in western kansas that if we just follow the continuous line of pavement we'd ride on the same stretches we've been on in WV and even on into DE. here i am in Grand Forks, ND, knowing that if i take US 2 (which i rode on to the airport this morning) a day's ride west i'd be on the same stretch of road where we had a hard time figuring out that when you reach the town of Inverness, MT you're supposed to turn south.
"the open highway is a song"
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