Erik: A movie? We’re actually stopping long enough to see a freaking movie?!

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - 12:00:00 AM

Wow, it’s been a while since you guys have heard from me, I wonder how many people have forgotten about us and how many are even checking the site anymore. I sit here in front of my two 19” monitors/keyboards/mice, 3 computers, and 1 laptop (with a broken screen, more on that in my last journal, yeah you guys got a while, and yes I’m such a nerd hehe) I think that I am home now. It all happened so quick, and looking back I always knew it would. I do have regrets, things I didn’t do, should have done, could have done, but I’m still young and there’s always time for more….. right?



I shall adopt John’s style of separating paragraphs out as in reading some of his it is a little easier on the eyes. Anyway, where was I……



We woke up from Paul’s truck’s sleeper cab rested, warm, and with smiles on our faces for having met such a cool guy to let us stay there. We had been wondering about the sleeper cabs in semi trucks most of the trip but didn’t have the guts to go and ask a trucker to check it out, it’s not like we didn’t stop at every single freaking truck stop! We had left our pops outside as the environment made a great fridge overnight and we ended up finishing off what was left of the 2 bottles. We gathered our stuff, tidied up the cab, pushed back the sleeping pull-downs and hopped out. It was a little chilly but it was a lot warmer than it had been the previous few mornings. We hid the key, said goodbye to our friendly accommodations and started on down the road towards town.



We took our first break in front of some security business out by the entranceway. I pulled out the laptop and labeled some pictures real quick which was interesting to do because the sun doesn’t make the laptop display very well, but I did get some stuff done and was packed up before Andy could start complaining about time.



We started walking again and about a mile down the road Paul stopped by in his truck (a ford ranger I believe, quite smaller than his semis) and offered to take us to breakfast. We all agreed and hopped in the back of his truck and he drove us off to this casino he knows with great breakfasts. I don’t recall the name of the place and I didn’t put it in my notes, but it was right on the main strip in down on the left hand side, one of the many casinos. Nevada is kinda goofy like that, you go into a gas station and there’s slot machines, a McDonalds has slots, Pizza Hut has slots, etc. During breakfast we talked about the trip, Paul’s businesses, and the Stockman’s sister casino in town called Commercial that had their kitchen catch fire not too long ago. They are famous for their 15 pound (yes, pound) burger. It was explaining to us the thing is 12 inches around, 8 inches high, and has a 5 pound meat patty on it and 10 pounds of bun and condiments. It costs $20 and if you finish it, it’s free. I guess there’s also some other prizes and stuff if you finish one off, and oddly enough there are some people that have come in and done it, crazy! I so wanted to check it out, we could order one and cut it into 3 slices like a pie and eat it like that, but alas the Commercial was closed for kitchen repairs and we missed our chance, maybe on our reunion trip it will be open.



We finished our breakfast, which was quite good with the fresh squeezed OJ and great French toast, said our goodbyes to Paul, and were on our way again. We passed a DQ and just had to stop in, as we have to at every DQ along the way, man we shoulda gotten DQ to sponsor us, or subway, or maybe the Casey’s gas station chain as we pretty much stopped at every single one along the way, mmmm Powerade, I had such plans for when I returned from the trip like putting a little fridge in my room filled with Powerade but when you aren’t doing stuff like walking, running, whatever and you try to drink a Powerade you just can’t. I’ve tried on a couple occasions and I can finish them off but not like I could on the trip, weird.



We walked farther up the road and saw up ahead, Stockman’s Casino! Yay, we’re almost there. Outside I changed into my still clean sweatshirt figuring that my shirt must smell a little bad. We headed inside and met Kaye at the front desk. She is going to school for machinery and hydraulics and when she gets out she wants to work on diesel trucks and heavy machinery, go women’s lib hehe. She informed us that check-in wasn’t until 3pm and we had some time to kill so we had the security dood stick our packs in a locked side room and wandered into the casino area to lose some money. I wandered around looking for the nickel slots, passing in disgust all of the dollar slots. It makes you think what kind of person would spend $100’s of dollars on a slot machine day after day, but I suppose since there’s not much to do in Nevada the dream of hitting it big and moving away proves too overpowering for some. We met an armored car driver named Vito and his partner, and man did they have some crazy stories. Vito was part of the “war on drugs” program down in south America years ago and he was quite amusing. We realized we had been in there for almost an hour past 3 so we said goodbye and headed back to the front desk. We checked movie times for Underworld, a movie that we REALLY wanted to see), figured out our plan for tonight, and out of curiosity we asked about their “internet rooms”. We had our room switched to one of their internet rooms but after we went up to it we discovered an extra little phone jack on the lap and no Ethernet jack. In calling back down to the front desk and having a small disagreement about what the term “high speed internet” was, with the staff the nice people gave us our old room back which turned out to be double the size, which was fine with us. We dropped our things down onto the floor and just crashed on the beds, so happy to be somewhere that we could relax for a bit, and maybe get some work on the site done too.



We journaled and John called quite literally EVERYWHERE to find a decent internet connection we could hook up to, with no luck! What is the huge problem with letting us connect to a library or school to upload our pictures, videos, and journals?! We had the hardest time with the local college in town, the main guy in charge of the computer systems there was just like “nope, can’t do it, against policy”, what a giant pain in the ass, I hope he get’s caught with kiddy porn on his computer and gets hauled off to jail for a long time, I was so pissed about this that I wrote a huge long post in a text file but I didn’t get to upload it for a few days.



I named more pictures which seemed to be what I was always doing when we stopped for a break or stopped for the night, which the latter was always so late nothing ever got done anyway, but that’s an issue for my final journal (and like before, you guys got a while hehe). After a while of taking showers, working, and journaling, it was getting about time for the movie so we tossed on clean clothes and headed downstairs to catch the hotel’s shuttle to the movie theater.



The ride took a little while getting to the hotel to pick us up so we missed our movie showing and we decided to go get some supplies at this Big 5 Sporting Goods store that was in the same strip as the theater, get something to eat at this place called Matty’s (which was really good food, I had a burger I believe), and see the later showing of the movie. At Big 5 we bought more tent stakes for pretty cheap, they were light and in packages of 8 so we each grabbed 3 and Andy took the extra since he seems to bend them the most. We also actually found the light bulbs for our Mag lights that we had been searching for, which we bought multiples of each. We looked around at all the crazy stuff that we probably had thought we would “need” on our trip before we left but we now realized that experience was the best teacher and since we never used even half of the stuff we did buy, well it was good we didn’t pick buy more useless crap, wow, are we getting smarter? Hehe. Andy did pick up a fleece sleeping bag to use as a liner for his sleeping bag when it got colder, actually a good idea but John and I just wanted to stop at Wal-Mart or something and pick up some long underwear (which I used ONCE up in the Sierra Nevada’s).



The movie was freaking AWESOME and I believe you can now pick it up on DVD, which is something that was weird to me when returning to a normal life, movies that we had seen in the theaters before we left on the trip were now on DVD when we got back, I don’t know, I just thought it was funny. After the movie we stopped at the Shilo hotel and asked the nice lady behind the counter for our shuttle to come pick us up from Stockman’s, I guess all the hotels have an understanding and shuttle people to and from each other all the time, neat. We hung out at the little café in the hotel for an hour or so, me drinking coffee which I have started to do on the trip, not because I need it but because it’s cheap, I can put like 7 sugar packets into it, it’s warm, free refills, and it’s like a buck. John had desert and I forgot what Andy had, just coffee as well, I think. After that we headed up to our room and crashed out hard, I don’t even think the lights made it off and I know I didn’t even get under the covers until I woke up briefly about 4 hours later.



Tomorrow is a day of rest, which for us never means rest because since there is NEVER time to do anything but walk and sleep during our days on the road that we have to take up our days of rest to play catch up. This has always annoyed me to no end and I think its annoying John as well, maybe one of these days we’ll yell at Andy one last time about it and he’ll finally realize that running to the goal is a really retarded thing to do on a trip like this, but I doubt that anything will change, nothing ever does, and so we march on.
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