The next and truly the last thing I remember before hitting Portland was a psycho gas stop off the interstate at The Dalles. Seven was hungry, so I pulled us in at a combo gas station-Taco Bell. I turned off the car and immediately wished I hadn't. Out of the dead heat and weirdly lit darkness there came at me a swarm of freaky people who seemed to jeer and cackle at Duke. They were utterly hopeless to discuss art with. There was a midget and leering giant, a weeping girl with a parrot on her shoulder and a face so plain that tears made her utterly despicable. And suddenly, when I wanted to back out and repark in the gas aisle, there appeared a red pickup truck behind me, boxing me in. I informed the gaggle of freaks that I was backing out and someone shouted, "You ain't goin anywhere!" and some redneck howled that I'd best not back into his truck or he'd something-something my head off.

I thought sure I was in for trouble, but when I looked back again the redneck and his truck were gone. By now I was sweating bad. I wolfed down a burrito Tex had picked up for me and got out of The Dalles as fast as I could.

And that was it. Somewhere in the blur of the last hour's drive into Portland, a couple of truckers came over our channel talking about their own break down troubles. They had both put in a lot of "break down time" as they called it. One of them said, "I've just been picking my nose trying to figure it out."

Duke made it to Portland, and I rewarded him with a period of rest. Leaving Duke with Tex out front of Reverend Chuck's Temple of Eternal Combustion, I squished myself into IFSM beside Seven and Baby and we headed off to Corvallis. I envisioned a lightening quick zip down I-5 to deliver me to Jill and peace. Naturally, that was not to be. Before we even reached the freeway, Seven had lost a lens from his glasses and punched Baby for the first time ever in a moment of extreme tension. Our minds were liked the frayed and smoking wire of that afternoon's electrical fire. We were stretched thin and hot after 14 hours behind the wheel. The last thing we needed was what we found next, construction gridlock on the I-5. That and a sea of truckers educated on art at the Rush Limbaugh School of Hopeless Intolerance and Slimy Opinions. In a somewhat treasonous move against Seven's freedom of speech, I switched off his CB just in time to save us from God-knows-what kind of angry trucker roadside beating. They were jeering at IFSM, and Seven is not one to sit quiet and take it. At 1 a.m. as tired and strung out as I was, I would have snapped if the truckers had heard him and decided to box us in with their big rigs or worse. We were at a dead standstill in the middle of farm country. Anything could have happened. When Seven discovered that I had shut him off and tried to tune back in, I threatened to get out of the car and walk. I wanted no part of the machismo confrontation that would surely ensue when his bitter art rebellion met their hard-livin'-for-low-wage road rage.

And who knows what rage of my own might have reared its ugly head in the claustrophobic specter of never getting home to Jill. I hated Corvallis. Yet suddenly Corvallis and Jill's little bedroll on the floor in some student rental were my salvation, the all and everything I craved in a mad and hungry night.

The freeway never got better. We pulled off at Salem and opted for a parallel route through small towns to the west. Naturally, we encountered the police. Some unidentified tailing officer glued his headlights to our ass for an excruciating 15 miles before leaving us alone. We made it to Corvallis and to Jill some time around 3 a.m.

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Last update April 1, 2004