When the squealing stopped and the smoke cleared, all that remained of a large chunk of the Kid's tread was a puddle-sized black stain on the pavement. Out of the driver's seat and around the back of the car came Billy saying check this out. He opens the trunk and out pours another cloud of smoke, all that was trapped inside the trunk. Bird bent down and with his finger carved out our call letters in the black dust on the street: ART, The American Road Trip, 1998.

Heading out of Sioux Falls, it was put to me to somehow get us to where Ramon and Trip sat in Ned's Yellow Submarine awaiting another UPS truck or something. I exited the main freeway early and took several of our cars on a dirt road detour that, though it looked bad for awhile, magically got us right where we were headed. But somewhere along that dirt road, I seemed to have lost a tire balance weight or something. For not far down the road, a wobbling tire began to shake the Duke like a tilt-o-whirl.

To change tires, we pulled off at some buffalo burger & Ghost Town stop west of Sioux Falls. The place was a riot, a thousand square feet of fireworks, trinkets, and weird attractions like the caged and well-dressed gorilla who, with a 50 cent incentive, would play the piano and sing some silly song. The ghost town was out back, presumably accessible though the store. Everyone loaded up on fireworks and buffalo burgers while I changed out the bad tire, laboring over a badly-stressed bumper jack that surely was never designed to lift the kind of weight Duke was pushing these days.

It was yet another five minute stop turned hour-and-a-half adventure, with all of us tromping out onto a pasture for a film shoot with the buffalo and nearly triggering a stampede. The pasture was anything but wheelchair accessible, but Seven isn't easily discourage and merely threw his little Honda into imaginary 4-wheel drive jungle-thrasher mode and drove on out there. As soon as Baby got wind of the buffalo, she went ballistic, barking up a storm and threatening to leap from the car's passenger window. By now, the store's owner had gotten wind of our activities, hopped in his truck, and raced on out with a mouth full of foul language and rabid spittle, threatening to call the cops if we didn't vacate at once. The fastest I ever saw the caravan move was out of the buffalo burger, singing gorilla ghost town tourist turn-out just west of Sioux Falls, SD.

And the excitement wasn't over. At the cloverleaf entrance ramp, the caravan slowly climbed onto the freeway, wrapping around itself in picturesque wagon circle fashion. So picturesque was it the moment that someone in a little red Japanese car coming down the offramp beside us lost complete control of his/her car and spun a donut before coming to rest half in the grass beside the road. The whew!'s and wow!'s communicated over the CB had hardly died down when suddenly Ned shouted that Seven was dragging something beneath his car. It was a heart-stopping moment that quickly passed when the piece of cardboard came flying out behind him.

A while up the road, I convinced the caravan to stop in Spencer, a tiny town that was already dwindling, its children having long fled to the cities, when a killer tornado struck a few months ago killing over 30 residents and destroying fully two thirds of the town's houses and public buildings. It was an iffy stop. I had no idea how we would be received but felt hopeful that our gift of comic relief would be appreciated.

And it was. Though there weren't many people left in Spencer to witness our arrival, the dozen or so who did see us assured us that our gesture would not soon be forgotten.

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Last update April 1, 2004