This thus far isn't gonzo journalism. This is reflection, introduction. This is freaking out with only four days left before departure and too much to do. And thus, this is all for now.

Later...

After opening Windows, I click to the file menu and there is but one file: ROAD706. But that is wrong, for today is the 7th, nearly the 8th. I'm giving this to you as I go. And now, it is a little bit later, a few hours closer to the official departure time.

I'm hammered. Tuesday night, a few short days from leaving, a million things to do and I opted to join Jill, her little brother and his friend on an evening of drinking. Shit. I'm outa my head. This is me running home barefoot from the bar. This is me communing with Duke in the yellow glow of some streetlight on this town's lone saloon stretch, another painted car parked beside him in the night in a sort of artcar solidarity. This is me ditching my keys in some shrub before I go near Duke to assure that no overzealous cop can catch me with intent to drive drunk. This is me running, barefoot, Birkenstocks in hand, bleached white pirate shirt billowing in the wind of my racing embrace. This is me taking in the moon, nodding appreciatively at some tree that seems to belong in the South, some swamp tree. This is me thinking, well, you may not be that bad Corvallis, but I hate you anyway.

On the way to the bar in Duke, Jill's brother said, and I quote, "This town should be proud to have your car living here." Would that it were true. This town never knew Duke, never will. I hate Corvallis, Oregon. I make no bones about it. It is probably the first place I have ever hated with such conviction. I hate it because for seven months this winter I had only to look out the window to see Duke molding in the cold and constant rain. I hate it because every time I ventured out to sit in Duke, to glue on a few trinkets, to commune with my only friend in Oregon besides Jill, no one would talk to me. No one would return my kind hellos. I hate Corvallis because it never gave me a friend. Some have said that Corvallis, the "heart of the (Willamette) valley," was known even to the Kalapuya Indian settlers of long ago to have bad energy. It was a place of sickness for the Kalapuya, if only at the junction of their tribe and fur trappers, the first white men to enter the area. Whatever. Their sickness was mine as well. From the first night I drove Duke into Corvallis, I knew in my heart that it would be a bad place for me, that it would be a gauntlet of sorts. I would survive it, but I would never be quite the same.

I spoke to Ramon tonight of the "caravan's" progress in terms of the sponsorship he has been so doggedly seeking. The news was not good. Goodyear, the supposedly in-the-bag sponsors for a dozen sets of tires, was not a go. The gas sponsors: an ever-greater long shot. Even my buddy Seven in Bisbee (that's his whole name, like Madonna), the one responsible for talking me into this weird trip in the first place, was suspended in some hearsay cloud of possible incarceration for God-knows-what kind of weirdness and hasn't been heard from in days. And suddenly, the 2-plus month tour of the western United States is, by default, being looked upon as an "at least we'll make it to Minnesota and back" thing.

Bad. Very bad. But more bad for them than for me, I have to admit. Or at least I have to think that way. Because if they do turn tail and run home to Houston from Minn., I've still gotta return west, an obligation that carries with it the honor and the assurance that I will be at Portland, Burning Man and Westfest. Oh, yes.

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Last update April 1, 2004