Cross Country Jaunt Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo

Monday, July 3rd

We had the greatest breakfast ever at the hotel in Missoula. They had everything imaginable and it was so good. The people were sweet in Missoula, too. Except for the bitch who cut in front of my in the juice line while I was patiently waiting for an elderly lady to finish what she was doing. It was no wonder the bitch was sitting in the corner by herself. I'm sure nobody loves her.

There was a gas station and a Starbucks right next to the hotel. That worked out nicely. We filled up and I had a tangerine juice blend. We backtracked just a bit to the University of Montana, drove around looking for the bookstore and then started wandering around on foot. The lady in the admissions office gave us bad directions (it was on her right, not ours), but we had a nice walk. We bought sweatshirts and then got a little lost getting back to the car. People said hello as they passed us on the sidewalks. It was a really nice place.

We continued on through the skinny part of Idaho, finally crossing into Washington. We made our way to Spokane and wandered endlessly on Gonzaga's campus looking for the bookstore. It was hot. I was cranky. And when we finally found the bookstore, they didn't have anything I liked in my size. Paul got a sweatshirt. We went back to the car.

We stopped at Sonic for lunch. That was the first time I was ever at a Sonic. They are few and far between here in PA. We ordered chicken wraps, what we believe is the equivalent of going to Yocco's and getting the fish sandwich (local reference...sorry), strawberry limeades and tots. I put the tots in my pocket for later. Ha! Just kidding.

We drove through the state of Washington, looking at the pretty mountains. We finally made our way to Jam's house. She came out to greet us and I made her carry her extremely belated birthday present into her apartment. We hung around there and I played with her cats. She has three very cute kitties, including a bit of a skittish kitten. She also has a bird. We tried to teach the bird to say "Seeeeeaaaaaatttle" like the girl at Zipperhead said to us, but to no avail. Instead it just made zipper sounds at us and pretended to be a bat.

We left her apartment to have dinner with her friend Carl. I finally got to meet the infamous Carl who copies everyone on emails to Jam's mom. I didn't realize that he was the same Carl until well into the night. Nice guy, but he seemed a little too disappointed that I no longer have big hair. I guess he and Jam differentiate me from all the other Chris's in her life by calling me the "Chris with the big hair." I guess they'll need a new nickname.

Dinner was at this Italian place that was pretty good. The waitress turned out to be a total bitch, though. When it came time to pay, we decided to have the bill split because everyone but Paul wanted to pay by card. She lectured us about how we should have told her sooner. Jam helped her with the extremely old computer system that they had. We got our check. Paul paid with cash and the waitress just assumed that he didn't want change and the rest of the cash was hers to keep. Granted, he was going to give it to her anyway, but it would have been more polite to ask. She then went two tables behind us and loudly apologized that she took so long to get back to them because she "had to split a check for the other table that didn't tell her that they wanted it split." Whatever.

Carl started popping these weird Japanese sugar candies that he referred to as "crack balls." After having a few, I'm convinced that "crack balls" is the literal translation of the Japanese label on the pack. Jam later gave me a pack of these things that did not make it past Wyoming. They have a bit of a citrus flavor to them and if you suck on them and roll them around with your tongue just the right way, they come apart in this powdery way that's almost like a pixie stick. It's crack, I tell you! Crack!

Carl noticed that the killer mosquito bite on my arm had now swollen to the size of an egg and asked me about it. Now that somebody else noticed it, Paul finally took me seriously that something was wrong with my arm. After leaving the restaurant (and Jam taking a few pictures of the moon with her camera on a tripod...fucking weirdo) we went to a drug store and got me some Benedryl. That knocked me out when we got back. I slept hard.

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006

We poked around in the morning a little, taking our time before going to the Pike Street market. The entire ride out, Paul kept talking about how he wanted a salmon hot dog. When we got there, the salmon dogs were temporarily discontinued. I joked around with the guy behind the counter, who told me that I should have called before driving 2800 miles for a salmon dog.

We walked around the market. I bought some cool post cards from the Allen Ginsberg photo collection and this cool travel journal. I started to get bitchy so we stopped for lunch at a place called Sisters. We had sandwiches on focaccia bread and listened to street musicians play bad Beatles songs. A guy in an all black suit chased them and then this chick started playing. I think the guy was the pimp of street musicians or something. Creepy. My sandwich had good west coast avocado on it. I'm definitely an avacodo snob. You can't get good avocado anywhere but the west coast. Even the avocado in Vegas was not as creamy and good. We grabbed coffee at a Seattle's Best, which had weird service, and made our way to the park for pictures.

After that, we went back to Jam's apartment and lounged a bit. We decided to go see "The Devil Wears Prada," which was good, but not as good as the book. We thought about going to see fireworks after that, but nixed the idea. We goofed around in the apartment some more and then went to Denny's. We played our own version of Pee Wee's Playhouse with a secret word that is and isn't dirty depending on the context. How we did not get kicked out of there, I will never know.

We came back and crashed out. The next day Jam would have to go to work and we'd start our trek back east.

To be continued...