i really wish that i had written about my journey across the country as it was happening, because i really feel that it was an experience i should have documented. i have a really shitty memory (thanks, chronic marijuana usage) so now many of the hilarious details have already left me. but i will attempt to recall as much as possible. or maybe i will just make things up because nobody will read this and after enough time i probably won't be able to distinguish the embelishments from the facts.
we left my grandparents' in cameron park, ca way too early in the morning. our first destination was salt lake city, which turned out to be something like a 12 hour drive. We had already been driving for several hours and were somewhere in nevada when my father purchased an up-to-date atlas. he found our location on a map and then started flipping many pages to look at a map of our destination. at the sight of all of this page flipping i grew extremely anxious and said, "oh god. can we really be that far away?" my father saw this as an opportunity to ridicule me since the maps of the states were in alphabetical order and the number of page flips did not correlate to distance in miles, just distance in the alphabet.
we finally got to salt lake city. we were staying in a hotel in the outskirts. we were hungry. we tried to find a restaurant. we settled on chili's, which turned out to be THE hippest place for mormons to be at six o'clock on a monday night. at one point i looked over at the table next to us to see a man clipping his fingernails. i am pretty sure that's some kind of health code violation. one of the hostesses looked exactly like this girl i went to high school with, which made me extremely uncomfortable. it was not her, but it was still weird. upon concluding our meal at chili's we decided to explore the mormon mecca and went to temple square.
most of the mormons i have met are very nice. this can likely be attributed to brain washing. so, we walk into temple square and are greeted by a young chinese woman who asks if we want to take a tour that starts in three minutes. my father and i agreed. the other tour guide was another young woman, and she was from hawaii. we stood around making small talk, telling each other where we from etc. then the chinese girl turned to my father and inquired about our relationship, asking, "you guys are... friends?" i do not know if child brides are common in the mormon church. i quickly responded with a disturbed, "no. he's my dad." which only made everyone feel more awkward.
the tour commenced. i'm not sure why i was not expecting this, but the tour was littered with information that clearly was meant to convert non-mormons into mormons. the two tour guides talked a little more about themselves, explaining that they were on a mission and would return to their homes when it was over, hopefully to find righteous men to get married to and start families with. i swear i am not making this up. and she definitely used the term "rightous men." while she said this she also gave a hopeful look to the ceiling, as if she was asking god to help her with this quest. i wonder how many times a day this happens. i cringed.
the next notable moment of the tour occured when we were able to visit a 12-foot jesus statue in room painted to look like the universe. they asked us to please be reverent as they played a narration about jesus. i wasn't really listening. but i did turn to my dad and ask, "is this creepy?" because sometimes i don't know if i just get uncomfortable in religious settings because i am on my way to hell or if they are genuinely unsettling. he also found it creepy. i concluded this section of the tour by taking a picture with jesus. i might frame it and hang it above my bed.
the rest of the tour was pretty boring. we went to the first ever mormon church, where the tour guides sang us a song and forced us to fill out notecards reviewing the tour. i didn't want to offend so i just said it was interesting and the girls were nice. it asked for my name and contact information which i was extremely reluctant to give. we then went back to our hotel and slept.
the following day's destination was colorado springs. to get there we had to drive through wyoming. nobody lives there. nobody. it also features the exact same landscape all along the interstate. at one point i got really excited because i thought i saw a bison, but my father informed me it was just a cow. such a bummer.
we had dinner at my dad's friends' house. they have had two children since the last time i saw them. their son kissed me twice, unexpectedly and uninvited. it would have been rather inappropriate had he not been six.
at our hotel room, my father and i discussed politics. we don't really agree on anything in that spectrum. i admitted my socialist leanings, and he looked at me with disappointment while telling me to hold on to my german citizenship. maybe i will.
the next stop on our great journey was fort riley, kansas. we were going to stay with some guy my dad met at his sergeant major's training and had served with in Iraq, but his family had some kind of function to attend, so we went over to some other family's house for a few hours. i am lucky my dad is so popular. we arrived at the other family's house before they were there. and as we were sitting on their front porch, hoping that we were, in fact, even sitting on the correct porch, i realized that i really had to poop. i also realized that it was rather windy. i asked my father if this part of kansas experienced tornadoes, and he told me he didn't know. i then commented that my car could use some rain to wash away all of the dead insect remnants that covered its front. i would later regret these comments.
my dad's friends finally arrived. i quickly entered their bathroom to move my bowels. while i was doing so i noticed that there were several different locks on the door. i found this strange. some more people arrived at the house and as we were all sitting around, we heard what seemed to be a siren. it did not sound promising. the tv was turned on to reveal that the area was under a tornado watch. i asked what this meant, exactly, and was told it just meant to be aware and if the siren went off again, we should probably go sit in the bunker, which was also the bathroom, which is why there were so many peculiar locks on the door. the siren sounded again, and i proceeded to piss my pants. not really. but i was shaking a lot. but that could have been because it was really cold in their house. i was definitely frightened. so, we all got in the bunker.
i think there was a total of eight humans, one golden retriever and a guinea pig. it was snug. we stayed there for about an hour or so, and then it passed. i am still amazed that on the one day of my life i happened to spend in kansas, the weather decided to cause a tornado to hit about a mile away from where i was staying. i was elated to leave kansas the next morning.
our drive to fort campell, kentucky was rather uneventful, as was our stay there. a major highlight was listening to the nelly/lynyrd skynyrd mash-up of "country grammar" the entire time we were in the vicinity of st. louis. this was obviously inspired by the fact that nelly utters the line "i'm from the lou and i'm proud." it was also awesome because the version of the song samples "sweet home alabama," our final destination. i find it very strange that my father enjoys nelly because any rap i ever want to listen to is not acceptable. but i will take what i can get.
then the next and final day of our travels was supposed to include a stop in Nashville, but after we got off the freeway and realized that the country music hall of fame would cost fifteen dollars per person to attend, we decided to just go home. this decison was also largely affected by the fact that my dad becomes easily outraged when driving in city traffic, and i do not enjoy all of the yelling. so we drove home to alabama instead, which was really just as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment