The Road Trip

Mota y Manacos

We both knew it was a bad idea. The last time Riley and I had gone on a road trip together had
ended badly. The inside of a car is sooo confining. Wed spent the whole time bickering over
directions and little things. That road trip was two days. This time wed be on the road for three
weeks.

We started off going in the wrong direction. Our destination was the US Airforce academy, to
the east in Colorado Springs but on the first day we set out from Yakima driving west. We didnt
want our mothers knowing we were going to hitchhike to Colorado, so first we had to ditch the
car at Rileys dorm in Olympia, before turning to the east.

One summer in the 1970s my dad had hitchhiked from Alaska to Seattle along unpaved roads.
Aside from a ride with some likely drunk construction workers and an ill-fated attempt to hunt
moose with spears, he had made it back to Seattle safe in record time. One night in an empty
expanse of wildflowers, he had seen the northern lights streaking across the earth and starry night
sky. His stories inspired me. I had tried hitchhiking in Taiwan and I had to try it again. Of
course, we were going to hitchhike! Riley and I were going to join the world of Kerouac and
Edward Abbey and see the navy.

Or air force or whatever.

What I didnt count on what was Rileys almost religious aversion to shaving and wearing
normal clothes. His road trip Uniform was a ripped up ratty yellow tank top which wasnt quite
long enough to reach the waistband of his stained gray cutoff shorts. Riley had made the shorts
himself from a pair of pants and had not got the angle of the cut right. The result was a diagonal
fray stretching across his leg and shorts that were 4 or 5 inches longer at the crotch than at the
hips. He also had a giant untamed neck beard and never showered. He didnt actually smell that
bad, but people expected him to. His fashion sense described as a yoga pose was Sunbathing
Taliban. I suppose we shouldnt have been surprised that even after a whole day of walking
along the freeway with our thumbs out no one picked us up. I probably wouldnt have picked uo
Riley either. We trudged back to Olympia and decided to drive after all.

Later that day, we were on the interstate going through the Columbia River gorge. Riley and I
were commiserating about how we didnt get any rides earlier that day. I suggested that it might
have been because he looked like a hobo. He insisted that his neck beard was sexy and shaving
was against his principles. The real reason was because old people are uptight. We were still
arguing the merits of razors, when we spotted a figure on the side of the road. The sun was
slowly setting and where the river met the base of the cliffs the dusk was pooling. In the shadows,
stood a man clutching a thick white comforter to his chest with one hand and holding out his
thumb.

Dude! Riley! Is that a hitchhiker? I shouted. Yeaaaaah. But were not picking up! He said.
Dude, we have to! Its kharma! I said as I slammed on the brakes.

The man saw us pulling off to the side of the road and ran over. While he was running over we
frantically began to move all our valuables to the front of the car. Riley found his knife, unfolded
it and hid the open blade under his leg. Just in case. he muttered.

The man reached the car, and without prompting, yanked open the passenger door and sat down.
Jesus Christ! Nobody f--king stopped all f--king day! Thank you guys so much! Jesus Christ!
He exclaimed as introduction.

He smelled bad because hed been standing out in the sun all day waiting for a ride. Hed
already spent one night sleeping on side of the road and had been about to spend another night
when wed come along. Three days before Hed gone to Portland with his girlfriend, broke up
with her, and now he had to hitchhike back Pendleton and retrieve his truck which was parked on
his now-ex-girlfriends lawn. The reasons for the breakup were unclear. I just couldnt take it
anymore! I swear this is the last time! He yelled.

In order to make the Theres-a-scary-stranger-sitting-in-our-backseat dynamic less/more

awkward, or whatever, we spent the rest of the two hours to Pendleton asking him about the train
wreck of his life: He told why all of his past relationships ended. Never clear, never his fault.
He told us why he was out of work. Never clear, never his fault. He told us how he came into
money and then lost it. I was abused by a priest as a kid. When I got the settlement I quit my job
and bought a truck. Oh god. We didnt him like him, but, oh god, how do you respond to that?
Oh god. Please dont elaborate.

He elaborated. Oh god.

We let him off at a gas station in Pendleton and as he walked away, Riley and I sighed and
slumped into our seats in unison. We passed other hitchhikers later on the trip, but there never
was a good place to pull off, or we always saw them too late, or the car was always too full.

We decided to spend a night in Boise where Rileys sixth grade crush, Allison, was going to
college. Nothing had ever happened between the two of them, but this time might be different!
Upon arrival, they immediately retreated into her bedroom. Over the sounds of the loud rap
music, the click and clink of lighter and bong could be heard. I sat on a white poofy chair in the
living room and watched as the white poofy smoke seeped out from under the door crack. The
door opened and two giggling red eyed zombies stumbled out. The bearded one spotted me and
grinned. He asked Hey Russ, Do you want a Jolly rancher? They taste amazing when youre
high!

I got extremely irritated at Riley that night. Marijuana scared me and I didnt want Riley doing it
or pressuring me to do it. Riley told me I should try it. I told him. Allisons friends, who had
been lured to the scene of the crime by the promise of evidence, agreed with Riley. If I just
smoked I would be less uptight. I suppose I shouldnt be Rileys mother and just let him do
what he wanted. And he should have been my mother and listened to my fears. The night ended
on a giant stone mesa overlooking Boise. The high people decided to hotbox me inside of the car.
World peace would be solved if Russ would just get high. I escaped just in time and walked out

to where I could look down at the bright lights of Boise illuminating the earth. I looked back and
saw the dim light of a bic lighter illuminating the little world inside the car.

Amistad

Perhaps I should clarify.

This isnt the story of a road trip; its the story of a friendship.

Riley and I have been best friends since we were five. Wed fought over the same girls together,
complained about the same teachers and dumpster-dived the same dumpsters together. Wed
even got our first restraining order together! The restraining order was against an entire block of
buildings in downtown Yakima. Apparently, people call the cops when you use an abandoned
parking garage as a starting point to traverse two stories of rooftops. Who knew?

The year after high school he had gone to college and I had gone to Taiwan to be an exchange
student for a year. The idea of a road trip had developed slowly over the course of the year of our
separation. Often, on a slow weekend morning, Id use skype to escape to America to visit him.
Wed talk about his weekend shenanigans, or the treehouse he was building in the campus woods,
or just add increasingly less subtle innuendo to whatever we were talking about before that train
of thought got derailed.

What we didnt talk about was how out of control we both felt. I was bored and felt my life in
Taiwan was drifting along without purpose. The harder I tried to talk to talk to my Taiwanese
classmates the more I interrupted class. I got in trouble for not doing homework from textbooks I
wasnt given. No one seemed to know what I was supposed to be doing at school, so I skipped
class and went to the library and hung out with the German exchange student Julian. If we got
caught and yelled at, wed go back to class and sleep. I had come to Taiwan to learn Chinese, not
to sleep at a desk or practice English with an already fluent German guy.

At least outside of school, I was learning Chinese. One of the best ways to learn a new language
is to get a girlfriend whom you can practice with. If shes your host sister, well thats even better
because you get even more language practice opportunities when you have to constantly deny the
relationship to your angry and suspicious host parents.

The worst part about the whole situation was I couldnt tell anyone. I was such an ungrateful brat
for being depressed. How many other people get the opportunity to live abroad and learn Chinese
only a year out of high school? Also, isnt it kind of your fault your host parents hate you?

Riley was probably having a rough year too. I think he was having trouble adjusting to college.

We didnt talk about our troubles though. We talked about the road trip. It was a way to escape
from our troubles without acknowledging them. We decided that as soon as I got back from
Taiwan we absolutely must road trip together.

Rainbow

We woke up in Boise that next morning and we both werent happy with each other. I was angry
that he smoked so much the night before. He was angry that I hadnt been super nice to Allisons
friends. I discovered hed hid his weed in our oatmeal supply. He got didnt see why I had to
take a shower at Allisons, so I took an extra long one. We hadnt seen each other for a long
time and we were both worried that something had changed. We both wondered if this was the
start of a growing distance and a friendship falling apart. We maintained frosty silence as we
packed and prepared our departure.

That afternoon we passed through an Indian reservation. The road was windy and near a stream.
Weird boulder formations rose up out of the hills. They looked like the Easter Island heads. It
was afternoon and Riley was driving. He saw an abandoned road and swerved into the exit He
wanted to take a weed break. He wandered off into the sage brush. It was sunny and warm.
White puffy clouds floated by against a bright blue background. The rock heads looked down
upon the valley we were in. I sat in the driver seat looking at the stream idly wandering nearby.

My mind idly wandered with it. I have the keys, I could just drive off I thought.

I eventually decided against abandonment, but something had to be done. When Riley came
back out of the bushes clutching his medicine bag I pressed the lock all doors button. Im not
letting you in until its all gone! I yelled through the rolled up window. He yelled back, but I
turned up the radio until I couldnt hear him.

He still had thirty or forty dollars worth of weed which he wasnt going to waste, so he
wandered back into the sage brush and rolled a massive joint. After twenty minutes I left the car
and walked down to the stream. He was sitting on the bridge. His feet were dangling over the
edge and he was finishing a joint the width of a cigar. I sat down next to him. We talked for a
while about why we were mad at each other, but there wasnt much to talk about. Maybe weed
had been the only source of tension. I halfheartedly told him to throw away his weed container.
Nah man, Ill just rinse it out and rub some sage in it he said. Whatever. At this point the
marijuana was nothing but ashes floating away under the bridge.

The rest of the day passed in a happy flash. Riley was happy because hed just smoked a months
supply of weed in twenty minutes. He sat in the passengers seat and giggling and scribbling
away in his notebook about all the revelations he was having. On the cover of the notebook he
wrote This notebook belongs to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

That night we departed from normal dinner routine. Normally it was oatmeal in the morning,
sandwiches at lunch, and spaghetti for dinner. Both Riley and I werent opposed on philosophical
grounds to eating good food. We were just cheap.

What we were opposed on philosophical grounds to was paying for lodging. Every night wed
drive till dark and then roll into a Walmart or rest stop. My job was to pee the cooler (drain the
melted ice from the cooler) and fill the water bottles in the Walmart restroom. Riley would start
the stove. In order to run the stove, you had to let the gas build up in a reservoir. After the gas

built you had to throw matches at it until the built up gas lit. Once the gas in the reservoir had
burned down the stove was hot and you could turn on the gas and actually cook. I loved to watch
Riley, holding a carrot in his mouth like a cigar, lean forward on his tiptoes and throw matches at
the stove. When a match finally hit the stove, a massive fireball would fly up into the air and
wed jump back cackling hysterically. We ate carrots by the glow of the roaring torch flowing
out of the stove. When the stove settled the spaghetti would be cooked, seats reclined, and wed
sleep in the Walmart parking lot while the yellow neon lights glowed on overhead.

This night was different though. Reconciliation was cause for a feast. So that night Riley bought
a watermelon for himself and we bought a tub of chocolate ice cream to split.

As darkness fell we descended onto the Utah border. Two cities, one in Nevada and one in Utah,
had grown into each other. My guess is the Utah city was there at first. Suppressed urges had
flowed out of Utah into Nevada and built a town. The Nevada side was bright and glowing,
pulsing, throbbing. There were casinos everywhere. The Utah side was dark. I think there were
churches. Dividing the two cities was a line across a street.

We were on the Nevada side of the line. There was half a watermelon and a half-finished
container of chocolate ice cream sitting in the back seat. Dripping and melting and running
together. This was going to smell later if we didnt do something now. Without saying anything
we both decided upon the proper disposal method. Sometimes a look says it all.

I drove back to the Utah side of the border. He rolled down the window. I accelerated. He
reached into the backseat and grabbed the watermelon and ice cream. I accelerated even more.
He brought his hand back preparing to throw. I accelerated yet again. Two things, a red thing and
a brown thing, splatted onto the pavement and red and brown goop flew everywhere. I yanked
the steering wheel to the left and drifted into a U-turn. We zoomed back across the Nevada
border. We were the Dukes of Hazard! We were interstate criminals!

As we drove through the rainbow of flashing lights and casinos, I remembered why Riley and I
were friends. We hadnt changed that much in a year. External storms would rage later in the trip,
but we would be safe because the internal storm had passed.

The Special Guest

This wasnt the first road trip I went on that summer. Right before my road trip with Riley, I had
gone on a road trip with my parents, brother, and a very special guest.

Both my parents are teachers, so they get the summer off. Every summer we went on a family
road trip to Wyoming. This year we were going to add a trip to Yellowstone, because we wanted
to show our special guest something exciting.

The special guest had come all the way from Taiwan. She had come back on the same flight as I
did. Her name was Tzuyu and she was my host sister. Tzuyu would be studying at Seattle
Central Community College that fall. In the meantime shed spend that summer at my house. My
host parents didnt know we were dating, but they must have wondered. I was very surprised

Tzuyu convinced her parents to let her go. Id been expecting the relationship to end when I left
Taiwan. I wanted the relationship to end, but I decided to wait until she was out of my house to
break up.

Thats what I meant to do; things happen though.

We broke up in Wyomingright in the middle of the road trip. It was awkward. She cried. My
parents were very mad at me. We cut the trip short and went back to Yakima. Our special guest
never got to see American buffalo or hot springs or geysers.

The earliest Tzuyu could move in to her college dorm was the middle of September. We got back
from our abridged family vacation in early September. She made some calls and found a friend
to stay with for two weeks in LA. There would be an awkward gap of a day on either side of her
LA trip shed have to stay at my house.

The road trip plan clicked into high gear and Riley and I moved our departure date up by two
weeks and two days.

Dos Iglesias

The same night as the ice cream and watermelon, I decided to see how fast the car could go. In
the morning, before his little Marijuana break, Riley had reached 110 Mph. Now it was about 1
in the morning and the road was empty. 1-80 leading into Salt Lake City is the flattest section of

the road in the world and the road was empty. I reached 115 Mph, but I told him 110 Mph. We
couldnt let this become a competition.

The next morning we entered Salt Lake City. Riley went to look for a guitar and I went
downtown to the Mormon temple compound. I toured a museum about Mormon symbols. He
joined me later. We wandered around the temple compound together. Each of us had only
brought one change of clothes because we trying to cut down on the weight hed have to carry
when hitchhiking. Riley didnt have anything to wear besides his bright yellow tank top and cutoff shorts. We wandered among the well-dressed Mormons.

On the stairs leading up to the giant temple there were twenty or thirty newlyweds taking
pictures. All the women wore pink dresses and the men wore matching pink undershirts beneath
their identical tan suits. Each one of them looked like they were simultaneously 19 and 35 years
old. Riley is tall and muscular, but he slouched until he was smaller than me, trying to hide from
all the conformity.

Riley and I had a mutual friend from High School named Patrick. Patrick was attending the US
Air force academy and he hated it. Patrick is a joker who cant keep his mouth shut. When
Patrick tries to shut his mouth his wit seeps out at the corners of his mouth and the sarcastic
comments slip out through his nose.

The Air force no longer allows actual hitting of first year cadets, but they are still allowed to
preform figurative beatings by yelling at people and making them do push-ups until they throw
up. Among his cadet class, Patrick held the record for throwing up the most times.

Our arrival corresponded with the Air force academys Parents weekend. Patricks parents didnt
want to come, so Riley and I, seeing as we were legally adults and therefore responsible, decided
that we would become Pattys parents for the weekend.

Riley has very strong opinions and likes to share them. I was worried that Riley would perform
his well-practiced anti-military rant in front of a general. Images of Riley getting arrested and
spirited away to Poland or Romania or wherever the CIA water boards people flashed before my
eyes. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is how big of a role the military
plays in society. Thats the only difference. There is no difference between a military in a
democracy and a military in a dictatorship. I hoped Riley knew this.

The night that we arrived at the air force academy we toured Patricks room. Every object in the
room had a very specific place. The razor had to be on the third shelf at exactly the 1/3 point
going from right to left. There were three or four diagrams and pages of regulations posted on the
walls. Patrick told us he slept on the floor because he didnt want his covers being out of
regulation. Riley and I stood in the middle of the room quietly taking it all in. Riley was
absentmindedly scratching his crotch while picking things out of his beard and flicking them
onto the carpet the single element of chaos in an otherwise perfectly ordered universe.

After the third day of showing Patrick around, we dropped him off late in the evening at the air
force academy and started heading south. We were going to the American southwest! We were
going to see the Grand Canyon and the Navajo tribe!

About 30 minutes away from the academy I asked Riley Wont it be really hot in Arizona?
Yesh He said absentmindedly. Clearly he didnt care. I continued And we havent been
running the air-conditioning. Wed been rolling down the windows instead because we were
trying to keep our gas mileage. Yesh He said absentmindedly. He still didnt care. You do
remember that were old enough to buy booze in Canada right? I asked him. His eyes lit up and
he began looking for an exit. F--- Arizona! He yelled as he did a U-turn in the middle of the
highway.

Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and half of North Dakota passed in a caffeine fueled daze.
We drove until dawn. We were going to Canada! We were going to see Moose and Polar Bears
and the Northern lights!

La Frontera
People like to say that crossing into Canada is easy, but crossing back into the US is super
difficult. Going into Canada, they look at your passport and wave you through with a smile. The
US, though? They like to say that the US stops being a democracy at its borders. Yeah, maybe,
but Canada is a democracy too. Anyone who says that the Canadian border is easy is full of
Merde.

Excuse my French.

The map showed a paved interstate leading all the way to the Canadian border. We didnt find
Interstate 85 though. What we found was a dirt road built by the oil industry. Miles of drilling
platforms lined the wash boarded dirt road. The irony about that road is that we were literally
surrounded by miles of petroleum, but there were no gas stations to be found. Wed have just
enough gas to reach the border.

Riley had acquired a handle of whiskey prior to the start of the trip, because if we were
hitchhiking wed need something more concentrated than beer. Neither of us liked whiskey
though, so the bottle was still sitting unopened in the trunk of our car. Neither of us was twentyone, but that was okay, because they never search the car going into Canada.

Nobody crosses the Canadian border at Fortuna North, Dakota. At the end of the dirt road sits a
rundown border crossing. All thats there is a metal awning stretching over a road just wide
enough for one vehicle. At each end of the awning sits a small shed. In the shed on the left sit
two very bored border agents. They sit in their small shed waiting, hoping for drugs, guns a
corpse! ---Anything to break up the monotony. Its a good thing they never search cars going
into Canada.

This was Rileys first time crossing a border. I shared some advice Never say anything more
than you have to! Border guards are evil single-minded machines! They will twist everything

you say in order to trap you. They are not your friend! Hand them your passport and then shut up!
But dont worry, this is crossing into Canada, so they wont search the car or anything

We rolled up to the border and an agent came out to greet us. After taking our passports he asked
us if we had any alcohol to declare. Nooope! Riley and I said in unison. We werent sure if it
was legal and its not like they were going to search the car.

A second agent came out of the shed. She told us to turn off the engine and get out of the vehicle.
Riley stepped out of the passenger side. Both the border agents ran their eyes along Rileys beard,
down his ratty yellow tank top and grey short shorts, all the way to his bare feet. Then they
searched the car.

They found my phone. Im going to need you to unlock this the female agent said. She looked
through my text and found one my brother had sent me. My brother had asked me where we
were going after Colorado. I had told him I didnt know. Why didnt you know where you were
going? She asked. I dunno. I mumbled.

They found my camera. The female agent had put on gloves and now her gloved hands were
flipping through my photos. Oh god, what if they found the photo of Riley humping a white
column inside the Idaho state capitol building? Or the one of him holding a banana to his crotch?
Or that one where hes flipping off the camera next to a police car?

Uh, oh! She found the public urination photos! Whats this? she asked. Uhm, thats just Riley
hugging a tree? I told her. The photo was blurry, and she had no way of knowing Riley never
wore underwear, so maybe she believed me.

They found the Ziploc baggie filled with little white pills. Thats Claritin I said when they
asked. The lady nodded and said ehmhmm as she put the baggie aside on a special table.

They found the rolling papers and asked Riley why he had them. They asked him where his
tobacco was. He told them hed smoked it all. Are you sure it wasnt weed the lady asked.
Riley told her No maam, just tobacco The lady nodded and said ehmhmm as she put the
baggie aside on a special table.

The female agent was Canadian and the male agent was American. The Canadian found the thing
of whisky. She asked the American Did they declare this? I wondered which side of the border
wed end up in jail on. Riley and I looked at each other. The American border guard said we had
declared it. Our guardian Angel!

Or they had a good cop/bad cop agreement going! They were working together to try to trap us.
They were letting us off on this, because they were hoping wed spill the real dirt. They kept
asking us to tell them where the marijuana was. They kept saying itd be easier if we just told
them. They didnt want have to call for a dog.

They took our bags out of the car and put them on the table. Then they started pulling everything
out of our bags and laying it out on the table. My underwear, my socks, my bag of condoms, my
knife, that apple core I forgot about were all lifted to the light and carefully inspected. They
found Rileys weed container. It smelled faintly of sage, and strongly of Marijuana. The
Canadian asked what it was. Its where I kept my lotion Riley said. It was an old Vaseline
container. At one point that might have been true. The Canadian told us it smelled of Marijuana.
Riley admitted he had smoked about a week ago. The agent gave us a last chance to tell us where
the weed was, before the dog came. Riley said hed smoked it all; there was none left.

They continued searching for half an hour more, but they didnt find anything else. Eventually
they let us go. We frantically grabbed the scattered contents of our bags and shoved it into the
trunk. We zoomed off into the night.

The out of gas light flicked on. Uh, oh!

The road was mostly downhill. I put the car into neutral.

We coasted into the gas station just as the car started beeping some sort of warning. Somehow
wed narrowly missed two catastrophes. Maybe wed been good people in a past life. Maybe the
border guards had figured we were too oblivious and obvious to have hidden marijuana in our
hubcaps. Or maybe there was no dog. Whatever, there certainly was a god.

The rest of the trip passed in a blur. When we crossed back into the US they didnt even look at
our passports. We reached home safely and still havent told our parents anything that happened
on the trip.