The .Plan

Has it really been a whole year?

Somehow I managed to make it through the winter without getting too burned out. For most interns, burnout peaks in January or February.

Now it has caught up to me.

I need a vacation.

Only 10 weeks. Ten weeks until this:

You head out to Point Lobos State Reserve when it opens at 9 a.m. — partly because the rangers go to a “one-in, one-out” policy once the 250 or so parking spaces fill up, partly because the light is better.

“I can’t even describe the color the water was this morning,” said reserve docent Patty Oglietti. “There is no name for that shade of blue.”…

You give yourself time to head south to Garrapata State Park, where rocks and water do astounding things on two miles of often-empty beach, or you head to Big Sur beyond that.
–Christopher Reynolds, “A view of Weston country in Carmel, California”, Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2007

Three years ago, I took a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Los Angeles. That turned out to be a very, very bad experience, and I have been trying to redeem it ever since. What better way to do so than to use a few vacation days?

Rarely losing sight of the Pacific Ocean during its 365-mile jaunt along the Oregon coast, US-101 winds past rockbound coast, ancient forests, and innumerable towns and villages. While the region also has its share of strip towns and places where the timber boom went bust, the beach loops, historic restorations, and more state parks per mile than any place in the country soften its few hard edges. Every 20 miles or so, you’ll pass through attractive, if moderately touristy, towns populated by at most a couple thousand people, but as a general rule it’s the mileage between these hamlets that explains why most people visit: To take in one of the most dramatic meetings of rock and tide in the world.

Between Ferndale and Mendocino, the main US-101 highway heads inland along the Eel River, but if you have time and a taste for adventure, head west from Ferndale along the narrow, winding Mattole Road, which loops around Cape Mendocino through the northern reaches of the so-called Lost Coast, a 100-mile stretch of shoreline justly famous for its isolated beauty. By road, you can only get close to the ocean at a few points—the few miles south of Cape Mendocino, and again at the fishing resort of Shelter Cove, west of Garberville—but hikers can have a field day (or week) exploring the extensive coastal wilderness. Some 50 miles of rugged, untouched coastline, packed with tidal pools and driftwood-strewn beaches, have been preserved in a pair of parks, the Kings Range National Conservation Area in the north, and the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park farther south.

From the coast, a pair of roads—Panoramic Highway and the Shoreline Highway (Hwy-1)—twist up and over the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais (elev. 2,586), the signature peak of the San Francisco Bay Area. Known usually as “Mt. Tam,” the whole mountain has been protected in semi-natural state within a series of state and national parks, and its voluptuous slopes offer incredible views of the urbanized Bay Area and the untouched coastline; drive to within 100 yards of the top for a 360-degree panorama, or stop at the Pan Toll ranger station (415/388-2070) for a map of Mt. Tam’s hiking routes and fire roads.
–Jamie Jensen, Road Trip USA

Today I was reminded about what a forgetful person I am.

In one of the church services I attended this morning, the pastor preached on the first chapter of Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Remembrance figures prominently in this chapter, with words like “remember” and “recall” and “mindful” and “remind” popping up here and there. The pastor diverged at this point to issue some vague exhortations about “you need to be Christians on more than just Sundays blah blah blah“, but I remained fixed on Timothy, lost in contemplation about what remembrance means (or doesn’t mean) in my life.

I have been rootless since October of last year, and the road trip was supposed to be the crowning endpoint of all this wandering. Now the heart is weary and begging for a rest. But my version of the plaintive “Give me rest” is more or less a pathetic “I want to sit on a beach in Miami and sun myself” — a revision that simply does not square with the call issued by the Author of my life and Editor of my mistakes:

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Here, rest does not entail promises of sun and beach, it involves shouldering a yoke that, while easy and light, is a yoke nonetheless.

Perhaps I am like the grumbling Israelites, who, even though they benefited greatly from unmistakably clear indications of God’s presence in their lives and his desire for them, promptly forgot about him the minute they thought his back was turned. I think that’s why the patriarchs were such avid historians. When I first started reading the Pentateuch, I always wondered why they kept repeating the Exodus story. Over and over. and over. and. over. again. Same damn story, every single time. But then I realized that they had to keep repeating the story, because the Israelites were such a forgetful and ungrateful people.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite passages in the Bible, Joshua 24. Joshua recites the exodus and expansion stories, and this remembrance of course demands a response from the people. His own response? Not “I want to sun myself in Miami”, but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. May it be so in my life.

No rest for the weary. Every night this week I have set my alarm for 8:00, but every morning I have somehow woken myself up at 7:00 or earlier. I woke up this morning at 6:00. After thinking it over for a few minutes, I decided to book it to Seattle, rather than hang out for an extra day or two in Yellowstone / Grand Teton / Craters of the Moon as previously planned (see yesterday’s entry for details). With that, I hit the road.

In the 45 minutes it takes me to drive to Big Sky, Montana, the temperature has dropped 20 degrees and the wind is furious. US191 north between Yellowstone and Bozeman is beautiful. Much prettier than US14/16/20 (the byway that Teddy Roosevelt called “the most scenic 52 miles in America”). During high school, I secretly harbored a fascination with wanting to visit Bozeman, as it was the place where Robert M. Pirsig (of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance fame) taught rhetoric and composition in his previous life as “Phaedrus”. My ZAMM obsession was short-lived, but I still wanted to see Bozeman. So I did, today. Bozeman is underwhelming, and I don’t bother taking out my camera.

Cool. From my balcony, I just watched a seaplane land on Lake Union. Very cool.

After Bozeman, I am on the interstate. No point in taking back roads anymore — I’ve got a mission (get to Seattle), and I want to complete it as quickly as possible. There are no more pretty trees and mountains — just flatness. The rain starts to fall at 9:15. As I head west to Butte, the clouds have swallowed the sky, but it clears up by noon. I look around Butte for familiar landmarks and see none. I’ve been here once before — 8 years ago, when a business school professor I did research for asked me to fly out to interview some execs at some random technology incubator.

The interstate crosses the Continental Divide just west of Butte — today is my fourth crossing (in addition to crossing it in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico) — and here the interstate becomes interesting as it winds its way through the mountains. At 10:00 I stop for a power nap. I’m really starting to peter out, even though it is a beautiful drive — all the way to the Idaho border, the interstate is 100% sweeping curves that can be taken smoothly at 60-70 mph.

I cross the Idaho panhandle into eastern Washington, and pretty soon there is a steady stream of eastbound cars, presumbly departing Seattle for the holiday weekend. On two more occasions I have to stop for power naps and am pretty much living on fumes at this point.

The closer I get to Seattle, the more and more doubts start creeping into my mind. And I start second-guessing everything. There are just too many uncertainties and too many variables — and no short-term foreseeable guaranteed upside. Fueling this internal monologue is a conversation I had with Harold just before leaving Cleveland about the pesky question that has been plaguing me the entire trip, that is, how one can know God’s will. And it can creep into all areas of life: Should I do psych or medicine? Who do I rank first? Should I rank Harvard #7 or #8? When do I pick up the phone and call her? Should I use a moving service? Do I want a Dairy Queen blizzard or ice cream sandwich? The questions are endless, and the answers, of course, are not forthcoming. All this time, I am well aware that preoccupations with knowing God’s will seem to be a phenomenon largely confined to well-educated, upwardly-mobile, North American Christians. After all, it is we who suffer from the embarassment of riches that bids us make decisions about which law school to matriculate to, which travel fellowship to take, and so forth.

I remember when, near the end of college or perhaps the summer after graduation, James visited Pastor Hugenberger’s office hours to talk about this very thing — an act which forever enshrined him in my “He Has Balls” pantheon of heroes. Hugenberger referred him to the lengthy discussion in Proverbs 16. Most Biblical wisdom imparted to me simply goes in one ear and out the other, so of course I don’t remember a thing of what James told me. But every time I start to puzzle about this question, at least I do remember to start with Proverbs 16.

During the summer after my junior year of college, I came upon Stanley Hauerwas’ book God, Medicine, and Suffering quite by accident, but I didn’t really engage the rest of his work until several years later, during medical school when I rediscovered the book. One of the central ideas Hauerwas has developed over the past 30 years is that, prior to the Enlightenment, there were no Christian attempts to distinguish between theology and ethics, and that only after the Enlightenment does one start to see Christians ask the questions “what do you believe?” and “what do you do?” separately and without reference to the other, as if the two questions could be asked independently.

From there, it is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from one of Hauerwas’ signature claims, which he makes in a short essay entitled “A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down” (found in his 1983 book, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic): “the first social ethical task of the church is to be the church — the servant community.” Put another way, Hauerwas argues that Christians should be more concerned with questions about what kind of people they are to be rather than questions about effectiveness.

People who are preoccupied with wanting to know God’s will tend to approach it almost as one might aim for a bull’s-eye: God’s will is at the center of the target, and if you miss it, then you are completely hosed. That strikes me as a rather impotent and ungracious version of what one might expect of a divine, omnipotent, and perfectly loving being. After puzzling through this question all these years, I’m right back where I started, at Proverbs 16. But something occurs to me today. Verse 3 seems broadly consistent with Hauerwas’ claim. Perhaps I ought to be more concerned about the cultivation of virtue (”commit your works to the LORD…”), thereby becoming the type of person who would know what a joy and privilege it is to be in His will (”…and your plans will be established”). And in the meantime, I will prayerfully and with some trepidation continue to make my decisions — to put the pen to paper, to pick up the phone, and generally to do what needs to be done.

(There is much more that needs to be developed here, but this was supposed to be a blog entry, not an essay!)

Since leaving Ohio, I have not seen a single speed trap — that is, until I get to Washington. From Spokane to Maple Valley, I observe no fewer than 6 drivers pulled over by state troopers, presumably for speeding. While I’m puzzling over Proverbs 16 and cruising along to Kathleen Edwards’ alt-country — which is just made for driving — I start to daydream again. The speed limit is 70, and although I’ve been careful all week to go no higher than 5 mph above the speed limit, somehow I’m at 81 mph when I see the sirens flashing in my rearview. Cheeky. It was an unmarked car just cruising along with the traffic — since it wasn’t a speed trap, a radar detector would have been of no use anyway. Now I know why Seattleites are so careful about following the speed limit.

NOOOOOOOOOO. I’ve been so careful for almost 3 years to get those speeding tickets (from my last road trip) dropped from my driving record. I explain to the state trooper that I’m moving to Seattle to start a new job at the county hospital — that seems to work in Cleveland — and what do you know, he lets me off with a warning. Thus chastened, I drive the remaining two hours to Seattle at a careful 72 mph. So, very thankfully my car insurance payments, instead of becoming astronomically high, remain just very freaking high (at least until September, when those tickets roll off of my record).

817 miles covered today, some 12+ hours, no breakfast, no lunch break. I’m about to die of weariness, but I really, really want to take a bath tonight (but not before I bleach the bathtub and scrub it clean). I pick up my keys and head for the apartment. There I am greeted by a horrifying sight:

Looks like the boxes I shipped on Monday arrived ahead of me. I move all of the boxes into my apartment. Driven by nothing more than strength of will, I head for Target in search of cleaning supplies. It’s only 5 miles away but seems like another 20. The bathtub is now clean. I draw a bath and drop in two bath bombs from Lush. I’m off to enjoy my bath. Hello, Seattle.

Tomorrow the unpacking begins.

Five songs from today’s “Seattle, Ho!” playlist:

• Gwenyth Paltrow & Huey Lewis - Cruisin’
• Patty Griffin - Forgiveness
• Frank Sinatra - Fly Me To the Moon
• Goldenhorse - Maybe Tomorrow
• Dixie Chicks - Cowboy Take Me Away

More photos from my barren apartment on my flickr feed — click here

This morning, I walked around the tourist trap of Deadwood and snapped a few photographs. Wanted to go check out the gravesites of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, but I was hoping to make it all the way to Yellowstone by sunset.

Heading south from Deadwood, I take the Spearfish Canyon Byway in search of the ‘Dances With Wolves’ filming site. The byway is beautiful — it’d be great for motorcycling, with plenty of sweeping curves and no switchbacks. When I get to the filming site, I am very, very underwhelmed.

Soon I am on the Interstate headed to Yellowstone. The earth turns orange near the Wyoming-South Dakota border and is beautifully set against the green of the lingering grassland. Gas is satisfyingly cheap in Wyoming. Why? As I head further west, the Bighorn Mountains come into view distantly to the west — challenging, “see if you can cross”. Have to stop at noon for a 5 minute power nap. I get off on US14. Fortunately, the melting snows have just opened up US14-alternate, and so I take the Bighorn Byway west. The road twists and winds its way to the top of the Bighorn Mountains much like the Moki Dugway in Utah. On the way up, I catch a glimpse of some mountain deer playing tag right next to the road.

At the top of the Bighorn Mountains, the sky opens up to a burst of blue pocked with scattered stay-puff marshmallow clouds. If you get out of the car and listen closely, you can hear trickling, running, gushing water. The snow has not yet melted away completely. I’m looking for the Medicine Wheel of the Crow, and when I finally find the turnoff, I find that the National Park Service has closed off the road due to snow. Boo.

At the end of the Bighorn, the byway heads back down the mountain. A sign warns truckers appropriately:

Fourteen miles of 10% grade. Just to see if I can, I switch my car into neutral and coast. The car reaches speeds of 60 mph easily, and I have to ride the brake all the way down. There are 3 turnoffs for truckers to cool their brakes. At one point the road stops twisting and heads straight down, and just to see how fast the 10% grade will get me, I let up on the brake. I hit 95 mph before deciding that brakes are a good thing.

I cruise into Cody and skip the Buffalo Bill Museum. But it’s 3:00 and I haven’t had anything to eat all day, so I stop by Dairy Queen for a blizzard. Soon I am on my way east along the Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway — a stretch of land that Teddy Roosevelt once referred to as “the most scenic 52 miles in all of America”. It is pretty, but I think Roosevelt was exaggerating slightly:

The byway ends at the eastern gate to Yellowstone.

All of these trips over the past few years, and I’ve never once stopped to think about what it means to travel alone. But just 30 minutes into Yellowstone, and I find the beauty overwhelming. Places like these were never meant to enjoyed in isolation — they were meant to be appreciated in fellowship with other human beings. At this point, an extreme heaviness (I don’t want to call it a loneliness, but perhaps these are just semantic games) weighs upon me, and I don’t want to see the rest of the park. I just want to close my eyes and save the experience to share with others later. Almost as if I don’t want to “use it up”. I take a few more photographs — the bison are cute, especially when they frolick about in the dust — but my heart simply isn’t in it anymore.

By 8:00, I reach West Yellowstone and sit down to think about this over a steak dinner. Tomorrow I had planned on seeing more of Yellowstone and then heading south through Grand Teton, but now I’m thinking I’ll just drive the 800 miles straight to Seattle. I’ll be back another day. What should I do? Will it be another 5 or 10 years before I can make it back here?

Five songs from today’s “Seattle, Ho!” playlist:

• Kathleen Edwards - What Are You Waiting For?
• Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris - Beyond My Wildest Dreams
• BB Mak - Back Here
• Johnny Rown - Porque Te Amaba Tanto
• Caedmon’s Call - Before There Was Time

More photos from day 4 on my Flickr feed — click here

Got a late start this morning, 8:00. Grassland across South Dakota — beautiful. Makes me want to pet it, as if it were Sulley’s fur (from Monsters Inc). One thing I have always noticed about driving across the midwest is the abundance of cheesy billboards (see May 28 ‘03). Just west of Sioux Falls, even though Mount Rushmore is on other side of the state, the billboards have already begun:

RUSHMORE CAVE — NATURAL BEAUTY
WALL DRUG — FEATURED IN PEOPLE

You also start to see billboards advertising “Corn Palace”.

EAR-CHITECTURE — CORN PALACE
CORN-SIDER VISITING CORN PALACE!
WE’RE ALL EARS! CORN PALACE
PREPARE TO BE A-MAIZED!
EARS TO YOU! CORN PALACE
YOU’RE ALMOST EAR! (last one)

The billboards are so corny that I just had to go and see for myself. Turns out that there actually is a palace made out of corn. Sort of. When the first corn palace was constructed in 1892, it was entirely made out of corn. But the modern structure is built out of traditional materials, and only the exterior is made of corn.

Soon I was back on my way. More billboards:

COSMOS MYSTERY AREA — FEEL THE FORCE!
DEADWOOD — WILD BILL LIVES
DEADWOOD — 1400 HOTEL ROOMS
ABORTION: THE CHOICE THAT KILLS (featuring a flatlined EKG rhythm strip)
REPTILE GARDENS — WE SELL REAL INDIAN SOUVENIRS

I haven’t seen a single speed trap since leaving Ohio. What is it with those cheeky Ohio state troopers? Crossing the Big Sioux River into Lyman County, the terrain changes; it becomes more hilly, and the roads follow sweeping curves. Twice this afternoon, a tuft of tumbleweed rolls across the highway in front of me. Cool. The whole time I am thinking to myself, it would be fantastic to come back here with a motorcycle.

With the exception of caving in that one time to see Corn Palace, so far I had successfully avoided getting sucked in by any of the billboards. But then one catches my eye:

PIONEER AUTO MUSEUM — THE REAL GENERAL LEE

And it has a picture of the Dukes of Hazard car. Now if that isn’t totally cool, I don’t know what is. So I decide to go check it out. Murdo (South Dakota) is coming up in about 30 miles anyway. When I drive into Murdo, I feel so foolish, but like a moth I continue up the road to the Pioneer Auto Museum. The exterior is as gaudy as they come:

I step inside. Still feeling foolish. “Are you here to see the auto museum?” “Yes, ma’am.” (not willing to reveal that I only want to see the General Lee) “That will be eight-fifty.” Ouch. This had better be worth it.

Inside, the auto museum turns out to be nothing worth photographing, not even comparable to the worst of the Route 66 museums. I make a beeline for the General Lee, muttering under my breath, for eight-fifty, you had better cough up some pretty pictures.

So that was Bad Buy #1. I get out of there as quickly as I can.

More billboards:

SOUTH DAKOTA’S ORIGINAL 1880 TOWN
BADLANDS PETRIFIED GARDENS — SEE 15 TON LOG
PRAIRIE DOGS RANCH STORE — NONE MEAN / REAL KEEN
PRAIRIE DOGS RANCH STORE — NO HOWL / NO GROWL

They all sound fascinating, but I have learned my lesson. I push on to the Badlands. Terrain-wise, I would have to say this is my favorite of the national parks, or at least #2 (second to Bryce Canyon in Utah). The wind is whipping up a fury, and the dust in my eyes dampens my enthusiasm somewhat.

The trails are well marked but are covered with this pebbly stuff that makes scrambling up steep inclines incredibly difficult. I pretty much wilt in the 80-some degree heat. What a glorious feeling.

I continue on to the Sage Creek Rim Road, through the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. The prairie dogs are way cool. (In South Africa I missed out on my chance to see meerkats; I guess prairie dogs will have to do.) The bison are not as cool; all they do is sit there and eat — no wonder they got hunted to extinction.

After exiting Buffalo Gap, I continue westward to Mount Rushmore. Impressive, but very underwhelming. You aren’t allowed to climb up there. For some reason I was anticipating scrambling around on Lincoln’s nose, like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in ‘North by Northwest’. Boo.

By this time, I’m just trying to squeeze everything in so that I can make it to Deadwood’s Gulch by nightfall. In quick succession, I zoom through the Peter Norbeeck Byway (where I have a close encounter with a goat), Custer State Park (more bison, yawn), Needles Highway (perfect for motorcycling; just perfect), and the Crazy Horse Monument.

My last stop, Crazy Horse, is still bothering me. After exiting Needles Highway, I come to a T-stop. I can either head straight for Deadwood and a comfortable bed; or I can check out the Crazy Horse Monument. I should go pay my respects, I think. Okay. Crazy Horse it is. I drive south. When I get to the monument at 7:30, the station clerk says, “that will be $10, please.” $10, WTF? I hand over the bill while asking, “what time do you close?” He answers evenly, “tonight, about 8:30 or so. But you should be able to see plenty of stuff.”

I get out of my car and start hiking down the road towards the monument. I just want to see the unfinished Chief Crazy Horse leaping out of the mountain, bigger than all 4 presidential carvings at Mount Rushmore combined. A guard comes zooming up on a motorcycle. “You can’t be walking here.” “Huh?” “This is a construction site. You can only see the monument by getting on the tour bus.” “When’s the next tour bus leave?” “The last one was 6:00.” Grr. Bad Buy #2.

Back on US-385 headed north and west, I twist and weave and wind my way towards Deadwood. During the last half hour, while Laura Cantrell’s “Too Late for Tonight” comes on the iPod, I start to daydream. A deer appears out of nowhere in front of me. I’m only going 60 mph, but it startles me out of my reverie and I finish off the next 30 minutes on high alert. It’s 9:00 by the time I get to Deadwood, and I’m exhausted. I find the first flophouse with Internet access and plunk down my $40 (not a bad deal). Originally I was going to hit up one of the 30 bazillino casinos in town to win back the $18.50 I spent on bad buys today, but after seeing all of the old ladies frittering away their social security checks, I decide to go back to the flophouse.

Five songs from today’s “Seattle, Ho!” playlist:

• Golden Earring - Radar Love
• Celia Cruz - Me Voy a Pinar Del Rio
• Mary J. Blige - No One Will Do
• El Gran Combo - El Menu
• Laura Cantrell - Too Late for Tonight

More photos from day 3 on my Flickr feed — click here

I woke up at 7:00 this morning and was on my way by 7:30. Indiana has some very pretty back roads:

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was difficult to find despite the signs. Trees everywhere. At first I was, like, where are the sand dunes? And then, through a thicket of trees, I saw it: oh, right. you mean the 150 foot sand dune over there.

At 8 in the morning, the sun had not yet warmed up the sand. My toes were freezing as I scrambled up Mount Baldy. 150 feet higher, minus two pairs of quadriceps femoris mm. later, I was at the top.

The blue waters of Lake Michigan beckoned. I ran down to the beach and toed the water. Ooh, icy cold. Riptide bad. After poking around the dunes for a little bit, I hit the road again.

I have never had a good time any time I have ever come within 100 miles of Chicago, and this time was no exception. Hit a bad spot of traffic outside Chicago and again outside of Joliet, delaying my trip by 1.5 hours. The territory in Illinois is similar to that of Indiana, except there are no longer any more red barns with white roofs. While driving, I thought about the geographic dispersion of truckstops — Flying J Truck Plaza abounds in Illinois, but farther west (Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma) you only see Stuckey’s. Every now and you pass by ‘adult entertainment’ shops and strip clubs with unimaginative names like “Adult Videos” and somewhat more imaginative names like “The Lion’s Den Adult Superstore”.

Meanwhile, I am making good progress through a series of Gordon Hugenberger and Tim Keller sermon MP3s. In one particularly amusing moment, Tom Baskett, during a guest preaching spot at Park Street, chides the males in the congregation for not being more assertive with respect to the fairer sex (this in the context of a sermon on 1st Corinthians 7):

“How dare ya punk out, when the Lord is on your side?”

Or, to paraphrase Russell Peters:

BE A MAN. DO THE RIGHT THING.

Crossing the Mississippi River over into Iowa, the sweet smell of manure greets the nose. There are more grain silos and fewer ‘adult entertainment’ establishments, and the terrain switches to hilly farmland.

During my first two years of medical school, two of the first three researchers I identified as potential mentors got poached by the University of Iowa Medical School. They made offers that my supervisors could not refuse. Seems like Iowa likes to spend money everywhere. Did you know that every rest area in Iowa has free wireless Internet access? There are a few rest areas without wi-fi, and they are clearly marked “PARKING ONLY” with a companion sign: “MODERN REST AREA IN 18 MILES” (emphasis mine).

By two o’clock, I’m starting to get hungry, so I stop by the old-fashioned soda fountain at Bauder Pharmacy in Des Moines, Iowa.

I order a milkshake made from their “world famous” ice cream: Butter Brickle, basically a vanilla ice cream with toffee chips. It’s a good milkshake, but not $3.13-for-12-ounces good. The Moosetracks milkshake from Tommy’s on Coventry still has no equal.

West of Des Moines you start to see “grassland”. I don’t know what else to call it. But it’s long and wavy and is mesmerizing to look at when the wind is blowing.

At around 3:00, the sky in my rearview mirror turns grey. There is a rainstorm creeping up from the south, and I am trying to outrun it. I don’t quite make it, and by 4:30 the rainstorm has caught up to me. The sun stays out, though, and the resulting sunshower is kind of pleasant. At 6:30, I pull into Sioux City and am drawn to the sign advertising “Trinity Heights” and the “Queen of Peace Statue”. Sweet. More midwestern Jesus kitsch! (See May 30 ‘03 and Sept 8 ‘03)

Trinity Heights, it turns out, is named for the 30-foot tall Jesus and Mary statues. (That would be me standing next to Mary. She’s about 25 feet taller than me.)

There’s more than just the 30-foot tall Jesus statue, however. There is also a “Circle of Life” dedicated to the unborn, complete with a “Tomb of the Unborn Child”:

And finally, a separate museum houses a life-size “Last Supper” sculpture carved by Jerry Trauffler, along with some of his other work.

A kind lady named Jean is planting some flowers outside the museum, and I stop to chat with her. Apparently the sculpture took Jerry 6 years to complete. He is a sculptor, but not by primary occupation. He works at the post office in Le Mars, a nearby town (which also happens to be the ‘Ice Cream Capital of the World‘). During his ’spare time’, Jerry creates pieces for priests in Africa and South America. Depending on the kind of wood he uses, the sculptures can be light so that the priests can just carry them along from village to village.

By the time I leave Sioux City, it is 7:30. I decide to try to push it all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Thunderstorms in the plains are intimidating. Because the earth is so flat, you can see for miles and miles around. If a storm is headed straight for you — as happened to me three years ago in eastern Colorado — all you see is a sheet of grey that gets greyer and greyer. Today, the storm was moving from west to east, while I was driving north. The mass of grey completely enveloped everything I could see to my left, and the clouds quickly shifted across the plains until everything was grey save for a thin sliver of blue sky off to the distant east. By the time I reached Sioux Falls at 8:30, the rain was falling in sheets. I was famished. Hadn’t had a full meal since breakfast. So I pulled into the nearest “family restaurant” and uncritically inhaled a plate of chicken-fried steak, then went off in search of lodging for the night.

Five songs from today’s “Seattle, Ho!” playlist:

• Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire
• Kathleen Edwards - In State
• Lucinda Williams - Right in Time
• Frankie Ruiz - Bailando
• Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence

More photos from day 2 on my Flickr feed — click here

After a morning’s worth (beginning at 7am) of moving, a satisfying bowl of niu ro mien for lunch, and a power nap, I hit the road. While driving to the Indiana-Ohio border, I counted no less than four speed traps. Cheeky Ohio state troopers. The territory in Indiana is very much like Ohio — lots of green and trees, fields dotted with grazing cattle, neat rows of automated irrigation systems. I was loving the bumped-up speed limit at 70. No speed traps in Indiana. Meanwhile, I polished off 5 Gordon Hugenberger sermons in quick succession.

I had intended to push it to Chicago by tonight, but around early evening Eliot called and during the conversation happened to remind me that the ‘24′ two-hour season finale was showing at 8PM EST. Oops, almost forgot about that. No more Chicago. So no rush. I decided to stop by Middlebury for some dinner.

As I rolled into town, I pulled in right behind a horse and buggy. Meanwhile, the iPod had shuffled to “El Libere” by El Gran Combo. I wish I could have gotten a sideways profile photo of that scene: yellow boy trailing a horse & buggy while bumping the salsa.

Middlebury is kind of a cute town, aside from the stars & stripes hanging everywhere:

Have you ever heard of a scrapbooking score?

Inside the restaurant, the waitresses are all clothed in the traditional Old Order — plain, simple dresses, hair covered by prayer bonnets, and aprons. Cynically I think to myself, I’ve been to ‘Amish’ restaurants in the middle of nowheresville, Ohio where the Amish garb is a gimmick to drum up furniture sales. But on my way to the bathroom, I sneak a peek into the back room — the cooks & dishwasher are also wearing Amish garb. Hmm. Maybe this is the real thing. Then I take another look at the business card: hours: Monday-Friday 5:00AM - 8:00PM. Well, that settles it. If they’re really serving farmers, then it’s probably the real thing.

My waitress, Sarah, is friendly but unhelpful. “How’s the meatloaf?” “It’s pretty good,” she smiles brightly. “How’s the raisin creme pie?” “It’s pretty good,” she smiles brightly, again. So I order the special: meatloaf, hash browns, and vegetable beef soup for $5.09. The soup is standard Campbell’s fare. The hash browns are heavenly — meaty strands of potato, not too oily, with just the right amount of crispiness. The meatloaf is okay — they’re covered with a kind of barbecue sauce that I was plus-minus about. The brightly shining star was the raisin cream pie:

The crust was so-so, not very flaky, but the raisins were plump and the whipped cream was delicious. While I was munching contentedly on my raisin cream pie, I leafed through some tracts that were in a box near the “Visit Amish Country” brochures. The tracts were distributed by the Gospel Tract and Bible Society and had creative names like Heaven: Your Future Home, 48 Hours in Hell, and A Happy Home. For $1.89, I couldn’t find much more to complain about the raisin cream pie, and I give it extra points for novelty since I’ve never had raisin cream pie before. But my quest to find a better piece of pie than can be found at A Slice of Pie (Rolla, Missouri) continues.

I chatted briefly with the owner, whose name is Verda. Is that short for something?, I dutifully asked. Nope. And she has a sister named Velda. Their late mother, Louisa (pronounced Lou-AYE-zah, not Lou-EEE-zah), had fallen terminally ill last year, and when Verda and Velda went home to take care of her, towards the end of her life Louisa had trouble distinguishing between the two because their names were so similar. At this point, I thought about making a Chinese joke but safely decided it would have been inappropriate. I collected my change, and she saw me off with a friendly “Come back and see us again!”

Tonight’s ‘24′ season finale was ridiculous. They will resort to anything to rope in viewers for next season. Count me out.

Five songs from today’s “Seattle, Ho!” playlist:

• El Gran Combo - El Libere
• Keane - This is the Last Time
• Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir - Order My Steps
• Andrae Crouch - Soon and Very Soon
• Malaika - Ngiyabonga Nkosi Yam

More photos from day 1 on my Flickr feed — click here