Salt Lake City to Olympia

The drive seems like a blur that includes about 16 hours and 900 miles.


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Shortly after getting out of the SLC metropolitan area, we passed into the state of Idaho.

Neither Tomko nor I had a very good idea of what the upper, leafy part of the potato plant looks like. At the beginning of Idaho, we saw a lot of corn and occasional hay, but nothing else: Particularly, we expected to see fields and fields of unidentified crops, which we could quickly assume to be potatoes.

By observation, Tomko and I determined that potatoes have above-ground parts that are kind of like soybeans in height and greenitude. We have not yet checked with the internet to verify this one way or another.

We were ahead of schedule--we were going to Portland and then leaving for Olympia at 2am--so we were somewhat leisurely about our drive. We decided to stop in Boise, since who doesn't want to be able to say that they went to Boise? Also, it was about 4pm and I figured that if we wanted to hang out at a public library, then we better do it sooner than later (before all libraries close).

There are many reasons that you will find homeless punk kids hanging out around a library. We ran into several when be pulled into the library, asking Tomko for cigarettes. Libraries are great places because they have: climate-control, electrical outlets, computers and internet access, potable water and sanitary facilities, and because you don't need to justify being at a library. You can hang out and that's just what you're supposed to be doing. If you have no money but want to hang around a nice place for a while, libraries are where it is at.

After we chatted with the punk kids for a while, we went inside. The first thing I remembered to do was to call VW parts places to see if they had headlights that would fit my car. The first place said yes. $62 each, including bulbs and orange plastic bits and so on. Great. Fine.

I am shocked that I managed to get from Baltimore to Boise without front turn signals, without being pulled over a single time.

We went to the place and got the new turn signals. I got someone to come outside with me to see if I was attaching them correctly, and as I was putting in the driver's-side one (the one that simply disappeared and I never got to see the inside workings of), I realized exactly where the hook on the spring was supposed to go. I made sure everything else was lined up and the light was plugged in, then yanked the spring into place. Horray!

The passenger's side one (the one that fell out because I had not placed the spring correctly) was a lot harder and took a lot more time, because unlike the driver's side, this had pieces of the engine blocking most access to the place where you wanted to put the spring. After I repeatedly bruised the top of my hand and knuckles shoving against gravity and springs, and then using miscellaneous silverware from the car as levers, Tomko managed to place the spring onto a piece of metal. It was not the correct piece of metal, but this isn't relevant. I yanked on it and couldn't get it loose, proclaimed Byzantium healed, and we got on our way.

Boise has adoooorable rush-hour traffic wherein we were stationary for about thirty seconds.

Oh, also we got a sleeping bag in Boise. Apparently, my mother reports to me, there were like three sleeping bags in the garage that I could have taken from Maryland but no one checked the garage to find this out.

On and on we drove. We hit Portland around 1am, and then hung out at a gay bar waiting for our friend Davi to get off work an hour later. Then he jumped into our car and directed us to his house in Olympia, Washington, where we quickly fell asleep.

Perseids meteor shower in the mountains

Clay's parents recommended that we go up the canyon to watch the meteor shower instead of the salt flats. Mary and her orange 1982 VW Vanagon, Patience, arrived in the late afternoon. We all piled into Patience and then picked up Chris, and the four (five?) of us sped off at a strong forty miles an hour up the mountain to our viewing location.


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It took forever for poor Patience to make it up the hill, and the cars behind us were frequently frustrated into passing us over solid double yellow lines. So that was interesting. We passed ski lodges and kept trying to get to somewhere that was more isolated, less lights, higher location, better viewing, whatever.

Eventually we were like, "Okay, we've climbed high enough, let's park the van on this shoulder here," and then noticed a few cars ahead of us and a sign that said [P] for parking. They weren't making a lot of light, and apparently were also here to see the meteor shower. So we pulled up, taking in the last spot available, and set up shop.

Mary made us all dinner with ingredients from Patience's fridge and using Patience's stove. It involved ghetto thai peanut sauce, broccoli, and peanuts. I am not entirely sure what else was involved. (It was dark.) It got seriously cold during the night, and I put on my green peace hoodie and huddled in the front seat of the van, where the wind mostly couldn't get me, and tried to peer out from the passenger window. I could see the lower end of the sky, where the Big Dipper and Cassiopia were, but I couldn't actually see Perseus or Andromeda, so it was not an ideal viewing location. Eventually, Mary convinced me to get one of her sleeping bags from the van and huddle in that while sitting outside with her, eating our food. I pulled my boots off and instantly climbed into the sleeping bag before my feet had the chance to get cold(er). We sat there for a while and just watched the sky.