invasion of america - indiana, missouri and other such luck

Michigan - Missouri

800 miles.

The rains were supposed to have passed over me in the night and I was supposed to wake up in the peaceful aftermath of the storm of the century. I was supposed to be free from my nightmare, instead I woke up in Jackson, Michigan under heavy clouds and filled with chubby rain, and 30 mile an hour winds that seemed to me to be winds that were late to the party and just trying to catch up.

Thankfully my route for the day was a short one and I would only be on the bike for around four hours or so. I loaded up, geared up and rode out of Jackson. I made a bee line for Indiana and didn't stop until I saw Football Jesus. (yes, you heard me)

Before the introduction of football to Notre Dame University, the school had commissioned a rather large, gawdy Jesus mural to be placed on one its more predominate buildings. The artist spared no expense and really took the labor to heart. It's a beautiful mural standing over ten stories high and as the centerpiece of the mural, there is a five story tall Jesus, who's arms are lifted up above his head, with crooks in the elbows, which is the same posture that a football referee takes to indicate a team has scored a touchdown. A few years after the mural was completed, the game of football took off in Notre Dame and the stadium was built so the "Jesus" would over look the field. Everyone in the stands can see it during games and it is rumored that the presence of that Jesus has helped Notre Dame become the power house that it is today. Henceforth the mural was called, "Football Jesus".

I finally pulled into Lafayette, Indiana three rain soaked hours late. I was tired, but filled with joy. The past few days of travel I have seen the landscape slowly reshape itself from the thick, plush forest covered mountains, to the more nostalgic soft rolling hills of the Midwestern plains. The plains where most of my formative years were spent and where most of my fondest memories reside. There has been a great anticipation growing inside me for months with regard to this portion of the trip. Originally I was just supposed to visit Adam and then move on, but with his disappearing act and my new attitude toward viewing the world and it's merits, I have a new strange anxiety that is contained in my emotional mix. With each field of corn I pass, I grow and more impatient for Kansas City. I have big questions and bigger fears. What if Adam hasn't called because he's dead? What if I get to Kansas City and it's just awful? Should I just keep on going or should I stick out the four days that I have planned there?

This the time where you remember to stay in the moment and enjoy where you are. In this case; Indiana.

The night I arrived I was really too tired to do much else other than visit the bar where I will be performing and maybe walk around a bit. We went down to the place where I am performing in Lafayette and it was holding the annual Shannon Hoon tribute show which honors Lafayette's greatest son. Axl Rose could have claimed that title, but he is always the first to rip apart Lafayette when someone asks him about it. It's not uncommon to do so and I bet most people would rip part their hometown if they no longer lived there or felt that they had to leave to be "free". However, he could just say something generic and move on. He just can't do it and because of that, you get the sense that Axl won't get an annual tribute show when he passes away.

For all of you that don't know, Shannon Hoon was the lead singer of Blind Melon which had two major hits (and one minor one) in the early nineties before Shannon Hoon OD on a tour bus while in New Orleans back in 95. When he died, his daughter was just a few months old. Now she's 11 and she was crowd surfing over tons of fans that remember the band and come out to honor the man, his spirit and his music. Shannon was a hippie at heart and he loved to be naked and perform that way. You can see where someone like that could find a following pretty quickly. Living in Tacoma, you would think we could do something similar for our famous sons, I mean we did give the world Jimi Hendrix. But we never will because we know that if we did, we know that millions of people would show up in Tacoma and invade our space. I sense that Tacoma-ites wouldn't dig that and neither would Jimi. His son is 40-something years old, I doubt that he would crowd surf.

The next day I went in and had some tattoo work done by a damn fine tattoo artist in old town Lafayette. I enjoyed his dudue's spirit and his sensibilities toward life in general and that always makes for agood tat. I left his tattoo parlor with a sore arm and less than four hours to prepare for the show. My DaVinci tattoo is looking better and better and I will post some images of it soon. I love tattoos. A little pain is a good thing. If nothing else - it's a reminder that you're still alive and you can still, feel.

100 tickets were sold or given out for the show, 38 people showed up. It wasn't the Shannon Hoon show, but it held its own. It was fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I can't say much more than that because I only have the feedback of one patron to form my assessment from. Who knows, they could have been terribly offended by the whole thing. I think I might have gained a reader or two, I don't know, I haven't heard from anyone in Indiana yet, but if the whole reason that I do comedy is to raise my readership, then it was completely worth it in the end.

I said my goodbyes to Lafayette and headed out early for the western horizon. For the first time in the trip, I have no idea where I am going or where I am going to stay next, and my anxieties over Adam and Kansas City grow with each mile I ride. The only thing I am sure of is that I need to be in Colorado in two weeks and that I am riding through an Indiana corn field at the moment. It's dead corn stalks which make me think more and more of Fall and that scares me when I think of "cold" and Fall.

The trip west seems to be calmer than the trip east. Perhaps nature want me to earn it or perhaps nature is trying to create great symbolism for my readership. What ever the reason, today it was calm. The sun was bright and warm and for a moment the winds were with me and things looked decent. I decided that a trip to Hannibal, Missouri would be the best course of action for me and I made for the border and the Central Time Zone. I had to cut out a huge portion of my Mark Twain sightseeing earlier in the trip and I have to salvage something!

More Corn.

And the return of head winds.

First resolution that I am making from this experience: NO more trips in the fall!

Illinois - More dead corn. Very flat. Over a few routine riding hours, the quality of human decency has started to slip and the quality of hygiene has regressed just as quickly. The only good news is that gas is a dirt cheap; $1.89 a gallon, but stopping to get it means more general ugliness by the locals. I am getting stared at more and more frequently, which isn't uncommon, but now the staring isn't about curiosities stemming from the bike's engine, or my sexy eyes, but rather, it's curious eyes like that of a caveman and his first experience with fire. "What kind of person rides a fancy-shmancy bike like-at?" I thought it best not to stop much if I could help it. When I did, it was on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, where I could be with myself and my thought and not have to worry about someone throwing rocks at me. With little fanfare I crossed the Land of Lincoln and practically sailed over the Mississippi to safety.... or so I thought.

The first impression of Missouri is that it's sooooo green. Endlessly green. The only salvation from a green OD are light brown cliffs and caves that appear randomly on the landscape Caves? yes, caves. Everywhere, caves!. Before it was called the "Show me State" it was called the "Cave state" did you know that? Missouri is almost all cliffs of sharp shale embankments, thick flourishing trees, small creeks(pronounced criks), deep endless caves that make up over 40 percent of the state's foundation, and poorly executed genetic mixing.

The things I love about being from Missouri; I love the fact that I can speak freely here and everyone around me sounds the same as I do. I like that no one asks where I'm from because I sound "southern". I like that these people aren't pretty in any way, which makes me feel like I have found my tribe. My bee hive, like the one in Blind Melon's video for "No Rain". I belong here. Missouri, the land of greatness. The land of great talents. The land of thinkers. Missouri spawned Mark Twain, Rush Limbaugh, Nelly, Sheryl Crow, Kathleen Turner, Kevin Kline, Charlie Parker, Cab Calloway, (and Brad Pitt). Missouri is fertile soil for greatness. Of course, you don't become great here. No, you have to leave to do that(as everyone on that list did). But you will need the memory of Missouri deep in your heart to inspire and motivate you. It seems to work best as a "or else" motivator.

Hannibal, Missouri is the childhood home of Mark Twain and the town is quite simply put, Tom Sawyer crazy. Even though the book is fictious and the characters in it are as well, the town has renamed everything, and had the state has recognized as state protected landmarks, most of the downtown as; Tom Sawyer's boyhood home; Becky Thatcher's house; Injun Joe's cave. These are real protected landmarks with real state signs in front of them. For people that are not real. I wonder if New York has "Batman's Cave". I don't know if anyone in town has read Twain's books, but I think someone needs to tell them that it's just Mark Twain's imagination(even the name, Mark Twain, is fake. But it's still Mark Twain's boyhood home).

It's a sentiment that pervades most of the Midwest, but it seems to have really taken hold here in Missouri. It doesn't have to be "real" to be real. You just have to believe in it hard enough and it becomes real. Maybe that is what makes Missourians such great superstars. They have been trained to believe in themselves without question and this has seen them through.

What I don't like about Missouri; "Guns save live" "God was pro-life" "Abortion stops a beating heart" "Vote no on human cloning"(this is what the right is calling the stem cell research bill) "Meat eating country" "I love trees, I used them to build my house". Stuff like this is put up on billboards to educate the residents of Missouri. It's a tortured tale. Without the billboards the people here wouldn't read at all. But what the billboards say is probably worse than illiteracy. The good and bad has a painful way of balancing itself in the universe. I'm sure the people that love what these signs say, wish they didn't have to "read" it.

It's easy to get sidetracked with all of the political and religious overtones of the ride. This isn't the first time that religion has owned the state I'm in and it won't be the last ( I have Oklahoma up ahead) but it's still hard to witness, especially when you know that the souls that believe this stuff are in the majority here. A majority that is still growing and will most likely vote no to stem research. Something that most of them would benefit from immensely.

I spent the night in Fulton, Missouri, because I felt that of all the towns in rural Missouri to sleep in, it might as well be the one where Winston Churchhill did the night before he gave his now famous, "Iron Curtain" speech back in 1946. I wanted to feel like I was making a good decision, which is something that I doubt a lot of the time. Fulton was a good decision.

I can not begin to describe my fellow Missourians in a fashion that is considered, "good Christianly" (her words, not mine) so I will try to say this politically and scientifically. I sat down to eat a modest meal at the local diner. Surrounding me on all sides are ghosts from my past wearing clothes from my past, speaking in tongues and filling me with the fear of God. Not in the way they might have wanted to fill me full of fear of God, but it's the same effect. These people love denim, the more ripped, tattered and stained, the better. The shoes lack laces and soles. Most of the hats are legible and contain a NASCAR emblem(the new religion). The tee shirts are all missing sleeves and have ripped down the arm hole to the base of the tee shirt, thus making it more of a smock with "Stone Cold Steve Austin says, WHAT!" These are my people. Teeth are optional and so is using soap. These are prolific breeders and the brood is usually in tow.

There was some Jazz playing in the restaurant. A woman, who was wheezing so much that I can hear it over the Jazz, screamed out, "Turn that shit off! It's making me ti-ard!!!" It was turned down and the last sensory barrier between me and my fellow Cave Staters was lost. Suddenly the air filled with talk of the upcoming NASCAR race in Kansas City and the proper way to get money that is "owed you" back from someone that "don't pay". I chose the lesser of two evils and learned that only a little violence should be necessary if you just show up with a gun and flash it a little. It works. I tried it with the waitress at the end of my meal.

The last thing I was able to see before I robbed the joint, was three of the largest, scruffiest looking guys turn from tough talking hill billies to three wet nurses in less than five seconds. One of the men's daughters came in with a toddler and left the toddler with "poe-pa" and took off. (Nothing fills the heart more than a woman smoking a cigarette carrying a two year old. Then leaving that child in a smoke encrusted diner with a bunch of NASCAR fans). The three men went from political pundits to "Gooch E, Gooch E, Goo-ers" so fast that it turned my heart. It was hysterical. If they would have had more teeth than the child, to fill their smiles it would have been picture worthy.

I have the biggest weekend of my life starting tomorrow. I need some sleep. So with the storms safely behind me, under the same inspirational sky that created great mental giants, and surrounded by landscape that could fill all it's caves with memories, I fell peacefully asleep. My grandmother's voice is calling me now and within her all of my life takes shape. She's tomorrow.