ON THE ROAD WITH GEO

Pop up in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Lo! Hi! High, low jack and the game.... Ever play the card game, Seven Up? My great-great-grandfather taught me to play the game when I was five or six and he chuckled to watch me cheat. Then he taught me to play Big Casino, and eventually Cribbage. Is it the trip back through space in my checkerboard past that's making me think of my great-greats-?

Rock Springs is seeing a boomlet here where, Cheney's old employers, Halliburton is spending its war windfall in developing natural resource so that they can finance Bush/Cheney's campaign in the fall.


SPEAKING OF BUSHMESS'S MESSY MESS

Is Bush still president? Has there been a regime change yet? What country am I in? From grey rock montains to red rock mountains, all in the space of a couple of days and drives.


TRAVEL TIPS

Why are motels afraid to advertize their prices on their billboards? It'd help a guy like me find the cheapest prices. But I just walk in and ask their rates, then leave if not in my budget range.

Have you guys come across the latest trick by gas stations along the way? You see on one billboard regular unleaded advertised for 2.00 a gallon and on another billboard you see unleaded advertised for 2.10 a gallon. Then, of course, you choose the cheapest station, but when you get to the pump, you find that the unleaded price is for 85 octane while the 87 octane is, you guessed it, still 2.10 a gallon. The honest company, which is telling you that the 87 octane you've always bought is still 2.10 gets cheated by the company which now has for four grades of unleaded gasoline. They've just added a new octane rating two points lower than we've ever had before. So watch the flim flammers along the way.


AN AMERICAN THING

America equals Route 80 in upper north-east Utah, east of Salt Lake. To the left, me heading south-east, almost close enough to scrape my elbow on, the beautiful Wasatch[?] range. On the right, miles of junkyards, specially the company that advertises, "We got anything you need. If we can find it." At first, I was going to be insulted, then I decided to relax and enjoy the dichotomy of American the beautiful and the ugly. My friend tells me that Utah's a place that really rapes the environment. I ask is it because conservatives own the state? Like in Idaho?

I know! I know! Idaho brags about its beauty. They think it won't run out. Most of them haven't lived in the east. The east still has beauty too, but it's the beauty of a small gemstone and not the beauty of a large canvass. Eventually, when it's too late, the average Idahoan will see the beauty become rarer. By the time they call in the liberals to straighten out the mess, or Bushmess, it'll be too late.

Eventually, I'll be back in the east, after a jog along the Gulf Coast, in the land of the hardwood fores... excuse me, hardwood "woodlots" all divided up by roads, highways and housing plats....