Duplicity

My childhood neighbor Mike now lives in Steamboat Springs, CO. I put my bag in his WRX at noon. The four of us (two Labs in the back) had a 24 hour road trip from Atlanta ahead.

The going away party enabled me to sleep all the way to St. Louis. After smelling what was probably some delicious local hot dog joint, we stopped, had a bite, and I took the wheel. We didn’t speak more than a few words; This American Life played the entire way. I wonder what I could do to catch the attention of Ira Glass.

I remarked to Mike how clean the air must be in Missouri. I could smell the local hot dog stands in St. Louis even outside the city. I could taste the smell on the sides of my tongue. After night fall in Kansas we stopped for gas and looked for a hot dog in the station. All we could talk about was how much we loved hot dogs (and thus America). In waves the smell came as did memories of hot dogs -- baseball games, cook outs, turkey v. pork v. beef, historical names of hot dogs.

At Topeka, about 12 hours away from our destination one of the dogs in the back audibly passed gas. Remarkable to hear in-and-of itself, most remarkable was the rich, fresh hot dog smell which filled the cabin. The following 12 hours I attempted to reconcile the prior 12.

Flat Kansas, led to green vast tree-less acres, then foot hills and finally the Rockies. Snow fell as we drove; the rivers crested their banks from the melt. We arrived in the “Boat” around noon Eastern Time, inside and surrounded by the peaks.