The way I figured it, I had already succeeded in kicking the Wellbutrin at least, having ceased taking it over a week ago. But mom reminded me that these things can stay in your system for weeks, and that I should be yet watchful of a crash. Oh, joy.

So now, 3 or 4 days later, everything's coming up rain and garbage. Ha. Not really. But it sure felt that way yesterday after a night of boxed wine, Darvocet and little sleep at the Buffalo Chip campground outside Sturgis, SD, at this very moment home to one of the largest motorcycle rallies on the planet, second only to Daytona, or so I've heard. It was largely an ugly scene, graced only by the passionate performance of one Carolyn Wonderland of Texas and her band The Imperial Monkeys. Despite the yuppification of Harley Davidson, the biker vibe is still an ugly one. Having been to Burning Man in years past and seen how such gatherings can go, should go, well, it made it hard to smile at the crudity of Sunday night's Sturgis satellite scene. Tomorrow I will get another dose of that scene, this time in Hulett, Wyoming. I'm banking on a better time there. Banking. Hoping.

And planning on not drinking or doping. With every night out on the road feeling so much like a party, it's hard when you're a drinker to remember to cool it a bit, to remember that the road for all its euphoric air is also a place of challenges, and, in my case, work. Drinking leaves me useless to write the next day, which when you drink nightly is every day.

But God the road is great when it's great! So great that it's all I can do to pull time away from the greatness to write.

Seven reads my Amtrak manuscript, or at least that portion that I've thus far managed to transcribe from my notes. He likes it. He says something about his trying to be less negative. I ask him is the manuscript too negative. No. It's intense, he says. "Only you could write about a train trip like this," he says. It pleases me to hear. It is my third crack at a novel, and I want very much to get it all typed out.

Go West Young Man...

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived a strange, strange man with a strange, strange car.

Another perfect day here at Devil's Tower. Ranger Michael Gallant zooms up to our campsite in his Ford Ranger to contest our fee arrangement. Gallantly he parries forth against the formidable Seven, who with his Golden Access Pass has gotten as many as six of us art cars into a camp spot together, an apparently permissible though certainly disagreeable maneuver to young Gallant, Devils Tower's most duty-conscious watch dog. He's a little prick is what he is. Came to me the other day at the KOA outside the National ark Grounds and gave me this long schpeel about hot paying the proper amount at the campground and how important it is for everyone to pitch in to support the National Parks and how little each taxpayer contributed to the parks last year, this whole big long civic duty bullshit rap to which all I could say was, "So much for public lands."

Ah, shit. I'm back into the notebook after some 3 & 1/2 weeks on the road trying valiantly to get the story down in little installments on my laptop. Alas, yesterday in the thick of the Hulett madness the deep cell RV battery ran outa juice and left me to wander and wonder stupidly, somewhat anxiously at first and then finally lazedly after popping a Klonipin in mood-drug-kicking surrender. Holly Golightly's mean reds were on me and 60,000 Harley Davidsons thundering all around me was just too much to cope with.

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Last update April 1, 2004