invasion of america - what's life without a little salt

Day 32 Salt Lake City.

If you ever visit Salt Lake City make sure you view the movie, "SLC Punk" before you go, or at the very least, watch it while you're there. It's a great little indie movie about a bunch of punk rockers in 1980's Salt Lake City. It's very funny, very educational and should improve your visit immensely.

I rented it and watched it first thing. Even though I have seen it a dozen times. I just wanted to freshen up on my SLC knowledge before I went all "tourist" on it.

It's Sunday - God day. And the powerful minority of Salt Lake City - the mormons, are all gathering at their temple to praise the big mormon in the sky... Again(as if he/she hasn't heard it all before). My friend and I have decided to walk all over the Mormon's sacred grounds as tourists just to determine for ourselves if there is any validity to this wacky religion. Before you jump on me for my ungraciousness remember this; they want you to treat God and their religion as a tourist site. IN fact, they give out maps and free tours to all visitors that enter the grounds. It's part of their ploy to increase numbers in their flock, which has been rapidly declining at a rate of 7 percent a year for the past ten years, making it the largest decline of any major "organized" religion in the world. These mormons are desperate to keep their place at the Table of Wacky Beliefs and Half Truths. To make the trip into the mormon compound more relaxing and less "free Kool-aide for everyone-esque" the head mormons give you a nice, sweet, demure... ....saucy, tawdry, completely fuckable tour guide to lead you through Valhalla. She's dressed modestly in a navy blue canvas ensemble that reeks something awful of military conformity, but she wears it well. Only her swollen ankles, bruised forearms(I assume that's from carrying the Book of Mormon around with her everywhere, as they do) and her luscious cleavage are all that you can see of her beneath the blue canvas "chastity belt". The only variance she might have from any of the other stepford wife tour guides wandering around is that her name tag has her name on it with a flag of her origination. They have one girl from every known language walking around, thus making it possible to give a tour to any person that walks in the door, no matter what. No matter which language you get, you'll want to hump her. I could be wrong; it could be the church grounds itself that make you so horny(yes, I love humping in churches. Odd fetish, I know, but hey, who among us is perfect?), but it doesn't help that they give you such a young, supple, delicious little women of faith, to walk you through "paradise". We opted out of the guided tour, deciding instead to take in Jesus on our own terms. This made the staff a little nervous, but I guess they figure that as long as you're on the grounds, then at least they have won half the battle.

The tour of mormon central is a simple and pleasing walk through seven buildings, all kept in a tight little walled off compound, in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City. It's here that the world - according to Mormoni - is centered. Each building represents something totally different to God and his mormons. First; there is the "First Temple" where the first mormons prayed and came up with all those great rules such as wearing name tags with your flag of origination on it, etc. It's also where they house the pipe organ, which is never played. There is the huge, metallic domed temple where the modern day mormons go to worship today. (you can't go in if you're not a mormon. God says.) There are two visitor centers at either entrance of the compound where you can go in and learn about the start of the religion and the go watch Jesus float among the stars and other celestial bodies. There are Adam and Eve displays showing the two in garments that would make the judges on Project Runway proud. Oh yeah, they're both white and mormon(name tags on their animal skin gave it a way). There are the wax statues of all the great Mormon prophets including Moroni himself - who is captured in a moment of study. He sits at a table in his native American hut, writing down the word of god on SOLID GOLD TABLETS. In a later scene, the wax Moroni buries the gold tablets so that Joe Smith can dig them up years later in New York. This place feels a lot like visiting a natural history museum and looking at wax Cro-Magon man make a fire while his wife makes a salad behind him, while a wild boar and a lemur look on.

--It's hard not to lose it here--

There are also films that are being shown all the time. There is one that shows the great migration of mormons across America. It shows their struggle with Indians, Christians, Cornhuskers, wild boars and lazy oxen until finally they are delivered into glorious Utah. "This is the place" proclaims Bringam Young and all the mormons cheer and praise God for the blessing. After a hard fought struggle to reach this fruitful valley, they walk down into the promised land and found that the huge lake which looked so cool and refreshing - was completely worthless and filled with salt. "God has chosen this place as our home". I think God didn't like mormons any more than we do. But mormons are tough and they are not easily deterred. Instead of giving up and moving on to California, they stayed and made the best of it. They humped a lot, built temples everywhere, bought up the majority share of Pepsi and Albertsons stock and became a superpower....

Which does nothing but piss off the 75 percent of the Non-mormon residents of Salt Lake City.

You would think that there would be some sort of balance between the two groups - there isn't. The non-mormons hate the mormons deeply, and the tension here is a lot like the tension that was found in South Africa during apartheid. 25 million black people all waiting for the day that they could rise up and kill the 3 million whiteys that were oppressing them. That day is coming for Salt Lake City. Watch your back Donnie Osmond!

Outside of the Mormons, Salt Lake is beautiful. Beautiful hills, trees, people, houses - it's very nice. Even the lake is nice, albeit stinky from all the salt. The weather was soft and easy and it made touring around looking at everything in the city very delightful. All in all, a great little piece of tourism.

Day 33

Posting. Crying. Sleeping. Not much to report. I needed a day of sloth.

Until later that night!!! PUNK SHOW. It was just what I needed. A good, old fashioned, punk show. Beat up little bar covered with band stickers and filled with punker boys and rockabilly babes. My heart soared. Opening the show was a band out of New Jersey called, State of Revolution(not very original, but punk was never about the names of bands). They put on a great show. The band was missing two of its members that had decided to bug out of the tour and go home, so only the guitar player and the sax player remained to get the word out. They were broke, struggling and doing what they could to keep the spirit of the band alive. It was awesome. They had no choice but to do their set acoustic and they just tore it up. It was by far, the best punk show I have seen in ten years. The other bands were good, but it was the State of Revolution boys that stole my heart. It was a good night.

Day 34

I have to be in Oroville, California by tomorrow night. That's 790 miles away. My ride, which I found on Craigslist, was a young adventurer that just so happened to be passing through. My traveling companion had come straight out of the wilds of Alaska where she spends most the year living out of the back of her pick up truck. She makes a modest living as a wilderness tour guide for rich tourists that come to Alaska to "rough it" and break in their Columbia gear. She also has, at a minimum, a half dozen other careers. She seems to be someone that needs to constantly be doing something. Presently, she is acting as a parcel service for the people of Alaska that have large items that need transporting back to the lower 48. The back of her truck/condo is full of items such as bikes, massage chairs and a large balloon that is used to lift up airplanes.... Yeah, I don't know what that is either. Oh!... And one stranded stand up comic.

It's a hard drive across the highland desert of Nevada. There is nothing to tourist here, except for the Bonneville salt flats where all of the land speed records are set, but that was presently under water from all of the torrential rains of late, so basically - it's just a very shallow, very large lake. Outside of that tourist stop, it's flllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttt. Flat. Super flat. My tour guide and I decided to stop and check out Bonneville, but we were only able to go as far as the turn off. From there it was all water. My tour guide decided to lick the ground to taste the salt which I found odd, but she said she licked to lick the ground of places she goes.... ..... It must be an Alaskan thing.

I drove us into Nevada and the tour guide fell fast asleep for the next 500 miles. I was left to gaze out into the barren wasteland of the high desert, in silence, for hours. She did wake up by Reno and there we stopped to take in the contrast of her daily life in the wilds of Alaska, to the sensory orgy overload that is Reno, Nevada by night. It was amazing to see her reaction to the this extreme form of human habitation as compared to her own. We ate at a coffee house which she had visited on a former adventure and sadly we found that it was going out of business soon. It was a tasty little meal(carrot ginger soup) and it was nice to see that there was actually some normal humans living in Reno and not just gambling retards or late night whores. It was a calm moment in my tour and it was amid all the chaos of Reno. We didn't hang out very long - A free room awaited us in Oroville.

Now, tour guide and I barely know each other and even if we did know each other better, it's still hard to spend time in a hotel room with someone when you're not sure where the "intentions" lines are drawn. I'm sure this is much harder for women than it is for men, but still. That uneasy feeling can prevent you from sleeping well. I could be mistaken; tour guide could have just preferred the back of her truck to a hotel room. I mean, she had spent seven months back there. It was tough to convince her not to sleep in the truck and to just sleep on the floor, but she finally relented and we both passed out around 2 AM.

Day 35

Show day. The tour guide was feeling a little pent up and needed to get out into the natural world a bit. Neither of us know the area very well, but we both know Chico, California from previous visits, so we opted to spend the day there. It was just a few miles up the road but a million miles away culturally from Oroville(which is to say; there is a coffee house and a college and no casino). When we got to town, she went her way and I went mine with the plan of meeting up a few hours later.

Tour guide ran off to see the world her way and I hope she had a good time. I was just too numb from all my previous tourism to care. I was broke. I was emotionally drained. So I decided to spend my time walking around in the heavy heat and just window shop. Somehow I crawled into a comic book shop and just immersed myself into comic book porn for two hours. I don't know how that happened.

The show... was a show. But it paid and money is good.

Day 36

We were racing as fast as we could to get to the Sacramento train station by 11:15 so I could catch the train back to Salt Lake City. We were thirty miles away with only twenty minutes to go and I just knew I wasn't going to make it. That would mean I was going to have to spend more money than I could spare to get back to Salt Lake City by alternate means. There was an air of desperation in the truck and so the conversation between the tour guide and myself was a bit short. By the time I rolled into the train station, it was 11:25. However, I could see that there was a train still sitting on the tracks and I jumped out of the truck to see if I could make the train and indeed I did. Sadly, in my rush to catch the train, I never said goodbye, thank you or anything else to tour guide. I just left her sitting in the truck in the parking lot.

I felt terrible about the way this portion of my trip ended. Without my tour guide I would have never made it across the great desert or the dangerous Sierras. The same dangerous Sierras that claimed the lives of rather tasty Donner party. It was due to my tour guide that I was able to get on a train back to Salt Lake City and to my faithful steed. It was due to my tour guide that I was able to see a different way across the country that I could have never planned for in a million years. When you try to control the world around you, the world trips you up and forces you to find another way. It's in these times that it's good to have a tour guide to show the way. It wasn't the wild, bear infested outback of Alaska, or even the blinding blizzard that wreaked havoc on the Donner party, but it was enough for me to realize that a guiding hand was needed. I needed someone to show me the way home. I knew all of this before I ran out of the truck and I should have said something to her before I left.

I am two days of riding away from home.