Great Westward Push Day 8 (Thursday, Sept. 26, 2002 — Gillette, Wyo. to Billings, Mont.): Plosky, Plosky, Plosky
It’s one week since leaving home. I check the tires and the fluids in front of the Motel 6 in Gillette — all seems just peachy.
I double back one exit on I-90 to have another grease-o-rama breakfast, this time at a Perkins. Every freeway exit is the same amalgam of chain restaurants & stores — it’s merely the arrangement that differs, and then only slightly.
As I pull into the Perkins parking lot, I realize there’s never any question out this way as to whether a given parking space will be physically large enough for my car (as is a concern with parallel parking, or the lot at the Porter Square shopping center near my house, for instance). These spaces seem designed for Suburbans, or whatever.
I read the Casper Star-Tribune over breakfast. On the business page, “Wyoming Stock” lists the results of livestock auctions.
I buy water bottles at an adjacent Albertson’s supermarket (it’s almost quaint, in this era, that supermarkets still change with every region of the country), get my car washed (a sign declares, “We will no longer wash excessively muddy vehicles”), and gas up (“Plus” again, because regular is 85 octane).
I drive out on I-90 west once again, regarding the cloudless sky and the vastness of the landscape, listening to Billy Joel sing “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” describing an atmosphere and a lifestyle totally opposite from what I am seeing, so far removed from my current reality that the contrast can scarcely be understood, let alone believed. Do Wyomingers (if that’s what they’re called) understand Seinfeld?
The pavement is red, which meshes neatly with blue sky, green and brown terrain, black shoulders, gray guardrails, white lane stripes, and the yellow line at the left of the road. When the pavement suddenly fades to a gray, I am moved to write, in my book, “Eh.”
Speeding along, often exceeding 90 miles an hour and hitting a top speed of 94, I imagine an encounter with a Wyoming state trooper. “75 not fast enough for you, huh, boy?” the large-hatted trooper might sneer. “You Yankee sissy.” Then I start to wonder what maximum speed my tires are rated at, and it’s my tire paranoia that ultimately makes me slow down, the same paranoia that has kept me off potentially interesting gravel roads and compels me to visually verify their inflation levels at every stop.
I see the Rocky Mountains through the haze, which is cool. I also catch a bit of local Wyoming radio, which involves awful country music and advertisements for livestock equipment. Uhmm.
I stop in downtown Sheridan, Wyoming, for lunch. This is an actual functioning town and it’s sort of pleasant to be here, even if it is more than a bit reminiscent of the stereotypical Old West town, one main drag lined with all the standard establishments. I lunch in the Sheridan Palace Restaurant, ordering a soup and salad, craving relief from fast food.
“Anything else I can get you?” asks the waitress as she clears away my plates, in a voice that makes me think I have mildly insulted her, personally, by eating so little. No, I say, and she looks at me steadily for a moment and then very nearly shrugs as she says, “Well, thanks for coming by,” as if my lunch is to be considered some sort of failure. I am moved to explain myself with a stock line borrowed from my father — “I’m trying to keep my slim girlish figure.” The waitress looks at me for a second. “Well,” she says finally, “mine sure went to heck.”
An old man is sitting behind me — he has been introduced to my waitress, by another waitress, as “Trouble.” Indeed. He is taking an awfully long time to decide what he wants and has still not made up his mind by the time I leave.
Guiltily, I get an ice-cream cone from a Dairy Queen in Sheridan before hitting I-90 once again.
I hit Montana — another new state! — and go to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, to see the site of Custer’s Last Stand against the Sioux in 1876. It’s moderately interesting, and I spend a little time there.
I arrive in Billings, Montana, at 5:10. On my way into downtown I pass a taxidermist’s and the Montana Women’s Prison, which has what I think is an overly proud green-and-yellow sign.
I drive around for awhile and dine in a Pizza Hut, which, incredibly, has a Sega Super Hang-On arcade game, the motorcycle-racing game — I haven’t seen one for years, and this one, astonishingly, still costs only 25 cents.
I then go to the airport, which, like the one in Boston, is called Logan — but this one is, ah, tiny. My trunk is cursorily searched — standard post-9/11 “security” — and I park the car. In the terminal is a collection of nifty Second World War-era posters, including an amazing Navy one that says “JOIN — Modern Mobile Mighty NAVY” and has a beautiful modernist graphic of an aircraft carrier reminiscent of the famous 1930s graphic of the French liner Normandie.
My parents then arrive, a bit before 8, adding two more Ploskys to the Push. Surely we are now invincible. They have made arrangements to see Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons with me, and will depart from Salt Lake City Monday evening.
I had seemed to remember my dad saying he’d made reservations at a Best Western, so before going to the airport I drove to the Best Western in downtown Billings — but it turns out that we’re reserved at the other one. After Pizza Hut I swung on by there, to make sure I knew where it was, and so now with my parents in the car I am able to drive straight to the correct hotel. The Best Western is a slight step up from Super 8 and Motel 6, but not dramatically so.
I sit with Mom and Dad in an adjacent restaurant (and casino/lounge) while they order some burger-type food to supplement their inadequate and disgusting airplane food. And then it’s sleep for us all, with an early morning planned.
Miles today: 280.9 (if I remember correctly)
Total miles: 2730.2 (if I’ve got the number right)
Noteworthy CDs: Billy Joel (esp. “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” Louis Prima (yes, Louis Prima!)