Helluva deal. And already one of the radio guys has offered me parking across the street from his place when Steve pulls up on a Harley and hands me the keys to his house. Says to go on over and make myself at home, that he'll be staying at his girlfriends if I need anything.

That night I'm back at Steve's drinking a cape codder, reading my email on his computer, watching myself on the 10 o'clock news and laughing at the miraculous results of a life lived with spontaneity and a desire to give.

Day Five

Minnesota

I think I was the first out of towner to hit Minneapolis and walk in the door of Intermedia Arts. At a little reception desk, I announced myself to a guy who looked like he worked there and would therefore know what was up. "Can I help you?" he asked. "Yeh, I just drove 1800 miles to get here, and here I am," was my reply. "I see, and how can I help you?" That stumped me. Weren't they expecting me? Had this greeter-person not been informed? WHAT THE FUCK?

As it turned out, the guy hadn't been informed. In fact, throughout the weekend, whenever I walked in the door of Intermedia Arts and past his eyeballs, I got the sense that he still had no idea who the hell I was or why I was there.

Beyond the door-guy experience, Minneapolis was groovy. All the arrangements people like Jan and Rachel and Ruthann had painstakingly made went off like clockwork. Well, almost.

Several cars came together to be interviewed by the media that Thursday afternoon. The only no-show was the media. Naturally, the media-liaison woman was disappointed and probably a bit pissed, but I didn't care. Not only had I been on TV the night before in Fargo, but I was toasted, my body some morpho-delusional cocktail of road exhaustion, arrival-euphoria and just plain come-what-may surrender to the universe.

That afternoon Ruthann escorted me to my accommodations, a brand new dormitory on the campus of Macalester College in St. Paul. Man was that place plush. The air conditioning alone was cause for throwing oneself down upon the carpet at Ruthann's feet and wailing in gratitude. I had a room all to myself with two beds, a sink, closet, desks, clean linens, the works. All of it was thanks to Ruthann Godollei, who, as a teacher at Macalester, had sold the school on the idea of putting us up. Dazedly excited and at once dead-to-the-world, I rain-checked Ruthann's offer of lunch and threw my body down for a nap.

To say I awoke refreshed would be wrong. I don't think I even slept. The bed moved like desert asphalt in waves of hot summer heat and my mind was a strobe-lit dance of broken yellow lines. There were flashes of fly-by cameras and huge trucks roaring into view around the blind corners of my skull. There were animals in the road, and people and cars and cars and more cars. Though the room kept a steady A/C cool, my head ran hot as an engine struggling to pull twice its weight up some impossible grade. And I never achieved deep sleep.

But somewhere in late afternoon I rose and phoned Ruthann. She came and took me to dinner at some Greek place not a block away.

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Last update April 1, 2004