[Leica] The Adventures of Eric the Red, part 6

[Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>]

One of the big news items up to that point had been the forest fires that
were raging in the US that summer.  At this point, I'd pretty much stopped
listening to the radio, since all I could get outside of the big cities was
country and western music, and I don't particularly care for either style.
So, what I didn't know was that one of the fires was not only in Montana,
but very close to Interstate 90.  How close?  Well, I started suspecting it
was really close when I noticed that the hills to my left were smoldering.
A few more miles down the road, police officers were instructing traffic to
slow and helicopters carrying large pouches of water were flying above.
Smoke was billowing down from the hills over the road.  We slowed to a 30
mph crawl and I looked left and saw the orange flames consuming pine tree
after pine tree.  Thick, fog-like, white smoke poured from the fire and
slid down the hill, engulfing the road.  You drove by following the tail
lights of the vehicle infront of you: drop behind them more than 30 m and
you'd loose them.

We got out of the worst of it pretty soon and the visibility cleared.  But
the sky was completely overcast with smoke and haze.  A good few hundred
miles later I entered Butte and as I got out of the car, the smell of smoke
was heavy in the air.  I can't begin to imagine how the firemen must feel,
trying to combat something of that magnitude.  Even the helicopters looked
puny, and the enormous quantities of water they dropped on the fire with
each load looked as though it could do nothing to halt the feriousity of
the fires.  To imagine that people are actually on the ground, inside that
inferno, breathing that air.

Given my short progress the previous day (not being able to drive by night)
I had set a target for myself for this day.  I wanted to get to Billings in
Montana, but dusk came quickly and I only made it to, appropriately enough,
Columbus, MT.  It turned out that Columbus was a major truckers' stop and
there were close to a hundred trucks lined up in loose formation in the
vast parking lot.  I phoned my progress report to Tom and listened to his
comforting words.  When you are a new car owner and particularly when you
are on a long road trip, your senses take on a new level of sensitivity.
You become accutely aware of all the noises the engine and chassis are
making.  What's that odd ticking sound?  I don't recall hearing that
creaking noise before?  Did the rear axle really have that rhythmic beat
before I stopped at that last gas station?  Tom's chief job, I think, was
to reassure me that all of this is perfectly normal and I was simply
getting more attuned to the noises that a vehicle makes.  As a passenger,
you lump all sounds together and call them "engine noise", while infact the
engine is probably the quietest component of all.  Road noise,
transmission, brakes, cooling fans, even some small electrical motors can
be distinguished separately.

I woke early again, just before dawn.  I made a pledge to find a mechanic
that could check the electrical system of the lights and get those fixed,
since I was clearly never going to make it to Columbus in time if I
couldn't drive after dark.  The morning was glorious, and I managed to pick
up a Billings rock station, which made a welcome break from the Elvis Gold
or
Johnny Cash Songbook 8-track tapes that I'd been playing.  8-tracks may be
cult objects, but quite frankly, the technology sucks.  Apparently, there
are inherent problems with the design, something to do with the alignment
of the tape head against the tape.  The tape itself is only as wide as a
standard Philips cassette tape, but instead of two tracks, there are four
stereo pairs, or eight tracks.  Hence the name.  The tape is a single,
continuous loop, so you never have to turn it over.  You get about three
songs in one track pair on one loop, and then the mechanism is supposed to
automatically shift to the next pair of tracks.  Of course, the one thing
you can guarantee with 8-track, other than the abysmal sound quality, is
that the first thing to fail on a tape is the automatic track shifting
mechanism.  So, you have to punch one of the stereo's knobs and it will
shift tracks for you.  The sound itself is a bit like a very, very poorly
aligned Philips cassette player.  Not much base, certainly no treble, and
the whole thing sounds like it's being played through a small, wet,
paper bag.  Which is a pity, because the speakers in the car are much
better than the 8-track technology.

So, a good radio station is welcome.  This morning I found one that was
playing "Hotel California" and I was singing along at the top of my voice
while cruising at a leasurly 60 mph along the sparsely populated western
end of Interstate 90.  I left Montana and crossed into Wyoming.  The state
slogan for Wyoming is "like no place on Earth".  I wasn't too impressed by
this, having just experienced the Californian coast line and redwood
forests, but I was convinced after 50 miles.  Each valley was completely
different from the previous, and each landscape looked like something from
another planet.  It was increadible.  I-90 skirts a number of national
parks in Wyoming, but even from the interstate you get a feel for the
unbelievable variety that exists here.

I zoomed through Sheridan, ignored the turnoff to Casper, and continued to
Gilette.  I entered the outskirts of the town and found a mechanic, who
checked the lights.  It turned out to be the switch in the dash that was
faulty.  Now, this is no standard switch.  It has a number of electrical
contacts, but then it has a number of vacuum contacts too.  A number of
systems on the Lincoln are powered by vacuum, including the eyelids.  So,
you need a special switch.  One, which by the way, costs $46.  Add to this
$29 labour and you're looking at $75 to replace a burnt out switch.  Car
ownership sure has its perks.  But, I now had lights.  I knew that I was
going to be able to drive through the dark, so I adjusted my schedule and
took more frequent but shorter stops.  I figured I'd keep driving until
about 2 am, sleep for about five hours, and then continue.  I'd typically
sleep for 10-15 minutes when I took a rest stop, so I was pretty refreshed,
even after all that driving.

I-90 only does a short kink through north-east Wyoming, then it enters
South Dakota.  The second place on the map after entering western SD is
Sturgis.  Sturgis is *the* gathering place for Harley-Davidsson motorcycle
fans all across North America (and probably other parts of the world too,
who travel there).  I believe it started as a race-meet once upon a time,
but now has turned into a gigantic HD community circus that has little or
nothing to do with racing, although at least a few years ago there was
still dirt-track racing going on somewhere in the middle of this cacophony.
I had entered the first rest area on the SD side of the border which was
located just before Sturgis.  It was now Monday the 14th of August and it
turned out that the Sturgis meet had ended the day before.  I decided I'd
see if I could see anything from the interstate, and if it looked
promising, I'd take some time off from my driving and get some shots of
Sturgis.  I had been seeing almost endless numbers of Harley motorcycles
going westbound along I-90, so I figured that most of it was over.  I asked
the lady at the rest stop if she knew if anything was still happening
there?
   "No, thank God, it's all over now.  For this year!"
Guess she wasn't a Harley owner.

Dusk fell and I pressed on.  I now had lights, so driving at night was no
problem.  I stopped for a meal somewhere, filled up gas, hit the road
again.  The target for today was to make Sioux Falls in South Dakota.
Actually, I had decided I was going to get off I-90 just before.  My
initial plan had been to drive along I-90 through Minnesota too, but
consulting the map, it looked like a quicker (and more interesting ride) to
drop down along Interstate 29 into Iowa and make my way across to Illinois
that way.  Columbus is quite a bit south of Minnesota and my new route
would allow me to cut diagonally across Indiana, rather than having to
drive first due east, then due south.  As I approached Sioux Falls, I again
started to be able to pick up radio stations that offered something other
than C&W in their programming.  National Public Radio (NPR) kept me company
for part of the way, then I managed to find some serious rock stations that
offered Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Metallica, Kid Rock, and
Godsmack in their line up.  Amazing stuff to keep you awake around
midnight.  I approached the outskirts of Sioux Falls feeling very alert and
perky and much too awake and eager to stop now.  So, I took a right onto
I-29 and started heading down towards Sioux City just on the SD/Iowa
border.  Time to say goodbye to I-90, the road I'd stayed on since leaving
Seattle, more than a thousand miles earlier.

- -- 
Martin Howard                     | "I am Pentium of Borg.  Division is
Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU       | futile.  You will be approximated."
email: howard.390@osu.edu         |                            -- Unknown
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------