• 7 : 00 P.M. PST
  Mister Bright Lights

When you enter Colorado, you are greeted by a sign that says, "Welcome to colorful colorado!". I am now in eastern Oregon heading west. It should have a "Welcome to Boredom Oregon!" or similiar. Just brown dirt for as far as I can see. (we need a "Welcome to Wishy-Washington!" sign) Using the laptop in the car is pretty fun, but it's hard to actually keep it on my lap with all the G-forces and given how uneven my lap is. We're only a few miles into Oregon, and already we've seen two people pulled over by state troopers. They were both on the side headed into Idaho, so it's either Oregonians making a run for the border, or Idahoans who relaxed too early.

As we passed through Ontario, OR, we saw a giant ORE-IDA potato food factory. There are many Ore-Ida products at the grocery store; tator tots, crinkle fries, hash browns. I've seen seeing em for years, but always thought the name was retarded. Seeing now that it's on the border between Oregon and Idaho, it makes more sense.

We spent the night in Twin Falls, Idaho. Two words: Strip Mall. They could have called it twin malls, except that there are more than two. The whole thing was just interlocking strip malls, as far as I could tell. Oh yeah, other thing about Twin Falls: flies. There were flies everywhere. A swarm of them invaded our room, they found their way into the Borders Cafe at which we got morning snack, they're everywhere. No idea why, but they're very bold. It didn't take too long to eliminate the ones in our room with a sock + sock blackjack. (Later more appeared, perhaps through the heat vent? Hiding beneath the rim of the toilet bowl?)

The pitter patter of bug bodies exploding on the windshield distracts me momentarily. We're getting more bug strikes by far on this road than any other so far, though they are all tiny bugs.

thank goodness for transparent materials

All these bugs! Their biomass dwarfs our own. How can we consider ourselves the superior lifeform on this planet? In what way are we superior? We feed on other animals and use them to transport us where we want to go? Well, those little parasites inside us feed on us.. and we move them where they want to be, which is near other humans. Sometimes one of our domesticated animals will decide it has had enough and go on a rampage. This would be how a parasite views a human who has gone to the doctor and is taking antibiotics - they were too hard on the host and he went rampant. Are we superior in apprehension? "What a piece of work is man," and all that? How would we know? We have not mastered the language of any other species on this planet. What, for that matter, makes us think that we could commnicate with life from any other planet? There might be bacteria on Venus... we probably won't talk much, us and them.

hmmm i think the sky turned on its turn signal

Yes, these are the kinds of things one talks about in eastern oregon. Bugs. Because that's what there is here. We are passing a bug now! The new VW bug. Hmm. Not much effort goes into the store names along this road.

none for me, thanks

"do not enter" signs should be sponsored by coca cola

Run-over tumbleweeds could be "slide weeds"

Addendum: we get home and everything is fine. Wrap up forthcoming!

i know now why people get emotionally attached to their car