From:  Chris Hoke <mineralrock@yahoo.com> 
Subject:  day eleven, wyoming=montana.
Date:  Thu, 19 Oct 2000


"you've gotta wake up and live" -robert nesta marley

we woke up, or rather when i woke up we were already
on the highway, driving to montana. sheridan is on the
 northeast corner of wyoming, so the drive to montana
was not very long. we stopped at billings (lord knows
why) to get some grub, some mc d's stuff. during this
time i was fooling around with our brand new GPS unit,
and i had it hooked up to the street atlas program.
man, it was really cool watching us bound along on the
highway, it gave us heading, speed, elevation, etc.
it's really cool.  what we have is a garmin GPS 3
plus. the plus means you can hook it up to your
computer. so, now i have a navigation system that is
(basicly) foolproof, although i manage to screw it up.
"how far till jasper?"
"um...looks like 175 miles, give or take 20"
"no, i want the exact number..."
so i'm not yet the crack navigator that the norse men
were, but i'm getting better. listeining to my bloody
valentine now, writing my log as we drive through the
canadian rocky mountains, trying to remember along
time ago. "every time i look at you, pins me too the
ground" cool stuff. my bloody valentine, it's really
sexual lyrics, inappropriate for my log. but i love
it.

we got out of billings as soon as we could, cause it
looked like a dive. i once knew a girl from billings,
and now i'm not surprised she never talked about home.
we were playing around with cellos and violins in the
rocky mountains, in steamboat in july. a crazy time.
i must have been 13 or 14, we were trying so hard to
grow up.  you know, when you just want to be cool. i
remember this one girl, she was from boulder, she had
really hairy legs, definitley nuevo hippie. and she 
was 15, or so. tellling me about exctasy, oh you
should try it, it's great, just don't sit down, cause
it's all in your spine. blah blah.  and i'm thinking
is this how you grow up? is this how you get old? she
seemed so old, so much older than 15. hairy legs. i
was impressed.  she wrote all these things on my cello
case, quotations and such. she wrote an entire beatles
song on the back.  i told her i love the beatles, we
would talk about real music all the time. kids were
still in hair mettal, or what ever.  she told me i'd
love the doors, she wrote cool things like "a day
without laughter is a day wasted" and other stuff on
my cello case. now i'm thinking about camp, all the
camps i've been to.  all i can think about now is the
times i've felt alone, inside of a group of people
that should welcome me. even in those camps there
were cliques and excusions, i remember i wanted so
hard just to be cool. i didn't even know what it was,
but whatever those other people had i wanted it. all
i can think about is being at choir rehersal, and
this one kid who was my age, but he always had a
morose look on his face, and long hair. i asked him
one day what he was listeing to (on his walkman) and
he was like "bleach"
"who's that by?"
"uh (like, you idiot) nirvana"
i don't know if i've ever felt so burned.
why am i remembering all this?  it was never about
the music, not at that age. music was what i did
when i had to do it.  i went there to escape parents,
and escape myself. here was a place nobody knew about
me, it was like a blank page. you never get a blank
page. nobody else will know, but you will. which is
much worse.

we thought we would get to glacier nat'l park that
day, but "stuff happens" we're doing all the hard
work for you, we're giving you the goods on where to
go, or where not to go. don't go to billings.  just
drive right by.  that's what we did. from billing we
took sort of a senic route up to helena.  helena
sucked. just a one horse town with a huge wal-mart,
some ugly buildings, an ugly downtown. the only good
thing in helena was our waitress, and she was from
boulder. she was sick of helena, she agreed that it
sucks. they were trying so hard to give it charm, and
it was just any other town in montana. lotta trucks,
lotta fat ugly people, lotta fat ugly buildings. still
listeing to my bloody valentine. these are the guitars
that killed the british isles. next i'll put on some
sonic youth.

we left helena as soon as we could. you could tell it
was a town of people that didn't hear the door when
opportunity knocked. we left and went north, a little
west, towards glacier. we took what was thought to be
a scenic drive.  it was sort of scenic, but it was a
twisty road.  i wasn't driving. it was like, fields
and fields of grass, dusty grass and fences made of
logs every ten feet and bare wire enclosing it,
keeping stuff in and out. there were acres and acres
of black angus steers for miles and miles, just
uncountable herds, getting fat. we saw buffalo, cows,
deer, the whole lot. so we drove through these hilly
praries with game on either side, till we got to a one
street town called augusta. if we drove west we would
be in the lewis and clark nat'l forest. so we did
that, driving on a gravel road that bounder didn't
really like at all. bounder rattled like a blind nun
playing with her rosaries.

we drove untill we found a place to park, and we were
anxious to get out because the sun was trying to set,
without our permission.
"Got a cotton crown, keeep it on the ground.."
-sonicyouth.
SY isn't very good anymore, studio wise.  they've
gotten all pretentious..i think. i really liked
washing machine, but nothing really since then.
"kiss me in the shadow of a doubt" -sonic youth
evol, everything up to goo is really really goood.

we parked and walked up a small slope, so we could see
the sun melting behind the mountains. it was like
someone took a huge slab of orange butter and flung it
to the sky, and it dripped down past the mountains.
leaving a fried film of orange in the sky.  wonderful.
it was so quiet, dad could hear the wings of birds
flapping as they past us. we walked around a little
more, enjoying the complete silence of the hills,
punctuated by cow pies and boulders, some as small as
a turtle, some as big as a bison. the last thing we
wanted to do was drive more, especially in the dark on
this gravel road that shook the bounder, so we pulled
into a shore that was right in front of a huge water
res. watched some movies, or one, and went to bed.

***/***/****
mineralrock@yahoo.com
chris