Land Before Time IV: Journey through the Mists

Basically what you need to know is this: In my vision Kate and Ben didn't survive and I barely managed to escape the raving mad Frenchman with my life. The rest of my cross-country trip was spent alone, which is terribly boring - though listening to this American life is almost good enough to replace a real person...scratch that - it's better, but still, without Ben I didn't have anybody to burn me new episodes and without Kate it was hard-er to change CDs. So yeah, with the Frenchman close behind me, I raced into the Nevada desert never to be seen again. He didn't catch me, I just think whatever link I had found into the future became disrupted, like a fuzzy radio station.

I returned from my vision to the whirring of my bike's wheels. Slightly startled by this sudden transportation back and forth in time, I momentarily lost balance and my bike began to tilt. Quickly I acted to regain equilibrium. If it had been anybody else they would have gone careening into the near wooden fence post, but with my superior reflexes I escaped. Oh, and besides, that incident had not been part of my vision.

Back at the campsite, I glumly informed Kate and Ben of the fate of the woman, her boyfriend, and of their own lives. They scoffed, but I can imagine that it isn't easy to swallow that pill. The night went on much as I had predicted it. By the fire we talked soft and laughed hard. We drank our Zion Virgin Ale. We watched the french woman ignore her boyfriend, and turn down his offer of a drink. Knowing the future I tried to ignore what would happen later and instead enjoy these last few moments I had with my friends.

The nearly full moon spilled its blue light onto the campsite. Three beers down I noticed that I had lost track of time and I hadn't been paying attention to the french couple. I jerked my head around and to my great shock saw the frenchman strangling the woman - wait - no, no - they were - MAKING OUT! Gross. Well, after that everything went pretty much back to normal. No necks were broken. No sleeping bags were used as coffins. Ben and Kate didn't shed deep purple blood under a raised cricket bat and the moon's watchful eye.

That night as I tried to sleep, full on s'mores, beer and tuna, I was struck by a twinge of sadness that the events hadn't carried out as I had foreseen. Weird. Then I realized that my knowledge of the future must have actually changed everything in some way. I flashed back to a tenth grade video project I did on "The Butterfly Effect and Chaos theory" where a butterfly's flapping effed things up all around the world and eventually led to the collapse of the Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh(Awesome). In turn that reminded me of Ashton Kutcher's movie "Butterfly Effect," which was far worse by all accounts. Then Ben said something sexist in his sleep. That put my mind at ease and steadily I drifted out of consciousness.



In the morning we woke, watched the French couple dress, then made way for our final overnight stop in Rachel, Nevada. You're probably asking yourself "what the hell is in Rachel, Nevada?" Well, I'll tell you what; not much. You'll know you've reached Rachel when you are 150 miles away from a gas station. You'll know you've reached Rachel when the only traffic on the road is an occasional dust devil. You'll know you've reached Rachel when the land around you becomes stretched and barren, when the mountains strangely remind you of sin. Then it occurs to you that these bald mountains were probably created by Satan's bifurcated tail. Boy, I'll tell you, I loved those mountains, not that I love Satan. I mean I don't really know him, so I'm not going to judge, but what I'm saying is that these mountains were sinfully beautiful.

Somewhere along the long lonely road (actually it's called "The Loneliest Road") we drove through the narrow valley between to peaks of bald rock . As we came to the crest of the road we'd been driving upwards on for sometime we were treated with a great view of this vast arid land. We came to a fork in the road and way off in the distance you could see where both roads hit the horizon in perpendicular directions. It was so far off that our perspective made it appear as though they were headed up into the heavens.

Twenty miles down the road we saw a sign covered in crazy ass stickers. I'd seen this sign in a tour guide book. Under all those stickers it says "The Extraterrestrial Highway," an indication that we had reached our destination. Lo' and behold, half a mile onwards, we reached the small town of Rachel. I mean really small, like a population of 98, and I think that number is a bit of stretch.

So, I had it in my head that where we were headed was gonna be a tacky, but fun motel of sorts. Like glowing stars on our bedroom ceiling, housekeeping in space outfits, lamps in the shape of planets, the whole shabang. I was so so so far off. We stepped into the ALE-EE-INN which had been painted with a huge blue alien on its side maybe twenty years ago. Now it was sort of hard to tell what was on the side of the building. There were a few kitschy extraterrestrial themed souvenirs inside around some plastic fold out tables, but beyond that the place didn't really try to be what it wasn't. What it was - was the town bar.


It was two in the afternoon so we still had a lot of daylight to burn, and there was clearly nothing to do around here. For a while we contemplated getting back on the road and making a break for Reno, but I put my foot down. I said "How does this trip mean anything if we don't stick this one out? Now we made our reservations and we've driven all the way out here. How can we say we've lived if we don't do this?" Well, Ben and Kate were impressed and gave in. We checked in after a really horrible, heart burn inducing meal. I wasn't feeling that well to begin with, so that didn't help. We were shown to our room and by room I mean trailer, a rather bland one at that. Yes, we stayed in a trailer that night. No cool glow lamps, no puss filled fake alien autopsy, no hot housekeepers in spacesuits. After loading our things into the room we went back to the bar to ask how late they were open. While we were there we had the pleasure of meeting a local. He was a kid, a pretty big one. I mean six foot and fifty inches around the waist. A big kid. Not to mention he had this sweet blonde mohawk thing going on. His older brother, who worked at the bar and was only slightly smaller, had caught a bug and was threatening to pour various kitchen poisons on it.

"You know bugs can scream," the younger brother said addressing us.
"No they can't," I thought, but kept it to myself.
"You know if you shoot a rabbit in the ass then crunch its head under your foot they'll scream like a baby," he continued.
"Heh, really," trying to act cool.
"Yeah, and if you snap at a head that has just been decapitated, it'll look at you," he said with a sparkle in his eye.
"You're filled with interesting facts," now visibly freaked out. I mean, I knew he was fuckin' with us, but still I was living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere for the night. I felt like if this kid wanted to do terrible things to me, he could, and without much of a fight. Then his brother came in.
"Stop trying to freak them out."
"Yeah, yeah," said his bigger little bro.
"Freaked out? Us? Naw," me trying to be cool again.

With that we pretty much fled, using Kate's cigarette addiction as our escape plan, and crashed in our trailer beds. Kate turned on the TV, which was static 24-7, and decided to leave it on. This reminded me quite a bit of Poltergeist, the Steven Speilberg classic, and put me a little on edge. I checked the room for trap doors or any way that people could sneak in in the middle of the night. Of course, I was ignoring the fact that we were sharing our bathroom with someone who lived in a separate room in our same trailer.

I took a much needed shower then tried to get some shut eye for the remainder of the daylight. We had made a vague plan to go to the bar later that night and get wasted, but at that moment I was in no mood. Kate was out cold on her bed and Ben was burning the best of Ira Glass onto CDs so I just sort of hung around and read this comic Ben brought with him. There was a storm cooking up outside and we watched it try to build into something worth noting but every time it looked like the rain would hit everything would go real quiet again. It was messing with me as well. I kept getting this feeling like something was going to happen at any moment, something great or terrible. Either the floor in our trailer would suddenly start sinking and reveal this sweet alien theme park underground or hundreds of rednecks would poor through the door threatening to feed us bull testicles if we didn't do whatever they said. The weather never permitted it though, it just kept coming then going, coming then going.

After a few hours Kate woke up. The sun was making its final salute on the horizon, and the clouds above were pissing me off. Rachel is supposed to have one of the clearest night skies in the US. The sky is the reason why Rachel, Nevada is on the map. People have been going there for decades because of some pretty good saucer sightings and its proximity to Area 51, but I couldn't see shite. So I decided since we couldn't see the real thing we would just watch Mars Attacks instead. This was another good choice. It put us in a good mood and a few hours later when it finished up and the sun had signed off we sat in the dimly lit room and stared at one another. Scrutinizing our expressions, trying to guess what the other was thinking. We sized each other up, then sized ourselves up. We couldn't tell if we had the balls to get up and go to the local watering hole, but I knew the answer.