Last Journey

The highway passed near the Wounded Knee memorial. I figured it was something we ought to see. So we went and read the names of the warriors that were massacred by the U.S. cavalry while they were dancing the sacred Ghost Dance, praying for the return of their ancient heritage.

Later that morning the Bike Bus rolled through Pine Ridge Indian reservation. I thought we might stop there and make a little money repairing bikes. Just inside the city limits we came upon an encampment of roadside venders, with displays of Taiwan merchandise spread out on tables in front of their RVs. I asked them what the situation would be like for our business. They were an unenlightening bunch of sourpusses, assuring us that the police would arrest us and nail us with stiff fines if we tried to do any business without a license -- and licenses were expensive and difficult to get.

I could just imagine myself rotting in a jail with Ellie and Steps stuck out there in the Bike Bus. Etcetera. Etfuckingcetera. No thanks.

I fired up the engine and we rolled through the town and out across the rolling hills, glad I’d had the sense to leave without taking chances. Yet there seemed to be an emotion of disappointment coming from the clouds, as if I’d missed a golden opportunity to meet some wonderful new Indian friends. Perhaps the town would have welcomed us with all their hearts... No. My intuition said: “Get going while the gettings good...” And in the back of my mind there existed a gnawing paranoia: I felt like some powerful spirit was trying to bring our Bike Bus to a permanent halt on Indian lands. I even believed it might be a benevolent spirit who meant to work a good purpose with us and all those bikes... (like the ones we’d “donated” at Upper Cutmeat...) But I guess I just didn’t want to stay and be an unwitting Santa Claus. I wanted to go home. I was tired. So we rolled along into a Black Hills sunset.

Steps apparently figured that the only way he could get Willard Fool Bull’s anti-booze philosophy out of his head was to fill his head with fermented hops and barley. With a constant can of beer in his hand he became angry and abusive again and the miles passed unpleasantly.

In Ogallalla we stopped for a few minutes at the gas station/grocery store, which was the town’s only visible building as far as I could see. I wanted to let the old building sink into my mind. My great-uncle John had been a strong image in my childhood. He was a bachelor and had spent much of his life teaching school on Indian reservations. According to my mother, Ogallalla was one of the places where he had lived and taught. The fellow who owned the gas station said he had bought it the year before from a couple who had owned it for fifty years. I was a little late. If I had arrived a year earlier maybe I could have heard some personal memories about my uncle John. I asked about the school. The owner said it was a very small school, not on the main highway; he said the road was rough... We decided not to go see it. All I’d need is another big bump to do in the Bike Bus’s top rack again. No way. I wanted smooth highways all the way home to Washington/Oregon.

We headed north on highway 385 and stopped in Hot Springs, South Dakota to enjoy the famous swimming pool. Steps was good natured again as he and I donned suits and plunged into the plunge.

The pool was huge, probably 150 feet by 75 feet, and the water was pleasantly warm. A fast water slide led to another smaller pool outside where the temperature of the water was quite a bit hotter. The water slides were great: steep and high. There was also a set of rings that spanned the width of the pool so we could really make monkeys out of ourselves.

Steps and I were like a couple of young boys. We laughed and shot some video and generally had a great time. The videos show us both grinning ear to ear.

I regret that Ellie didn’t come with us into the pools. I really wanted all of us to go but at eight dollars per person we were stretching our finances just getting me and Steps inside. So I asked Ellie if she wouldn’t mind too much sitting this one out. But I felt bad about it. I like taking Ellie into places like that. Anything that makes her laugh makes me feel good too. She deserves all the happiness in the world.

But there was also another reason I asked her not to come with us: I didn’t trust leaving the Bike Bus unattended. Someone had to stay with the bus -- and that meant Ellie had to stay with the bus. Because it would be so easy for someone to jump inside and grab the camcorders and the Martin guitar and then vanish. Someone might even locate my wallet. Steps offered to stay and watch everything. But -- Whew! That didn’t sound cool... I decided that I’d rather have him with me. Besides, he needed a good bath and a little fun... Ellie wouldn’t mind missing out this once.

Steps and I stayed in the plunge for about three hours. When we got back to the Bike Bus Ellie wasn’t around and the door was wide open. It looked like she had taken a walk. At first I was mad but then I was worried. I got on a bike and rode many miles looking for her before returning to the bus.

The day passed and night fell. Ellie still didn’t show up. I contacted a cop and told him she might be lost. He took down her description and I showed him a photograph. He said he’d watch out for her. I figured we’d better stay parked right where we were so Ellie could find us. The cop said that would be ok. Steps and I cooked up supper and listened to music. We went to sleep.

Morning came and still no Ellie. I checked in with the cops. They didn’t have any news for me. I rode around on the bike several times. Nothing. Steps wondered aloud if Ellie had left me. Naw... I didn’t think that was likely... Not after all these years… But why would she disappear suddenly leaving the door of the bus open like that? We waited there the whole day. Night fell again. I was feeling maximum frazzled.

About 9:00 PM a cop-car pulled up to the Bike Bus. Ellie was in the back seat. What a relief!! I hugged her and gently upbraided her for worrying us so much. The cop said he had found her walking along a sidewalk looking very disoriented. I thanked him and assured him I’d give Ellie some of her medication right away. The cop was a good guy.

After he left I asked Ellie where she’d been? She gave me the same answer she always gives me after times like that. She said:

I was just glad she was home. I can only guess what happened since she didn’t feel it was necessary to explain it all to me detail by detail. She had probably been standing out in front of the bus when some local people stopped and talked with her and she asked them where a store might be and they offered to take her. As she sat in their car with them they probably construed from her unintelligible French/English lingo that she was a mental case and decided they wanted to dump her. So they drove her to a store a few miles away and dropped her off. She didn’t know where she was and walked in the wrong direction and got totally lost. And who knows what adventures followed during the following thirty hours? This has happened before to her, several times. It always makes me crazy with worry.

We heard about a free hotspring about seventy miles distant. We had to back-track to get there but I figured it would be worth it. We discovered that the spring water wasn’t really “hot”; rather it was a cool sixty-five degrees year round, not my cup of tea. But we hung out and swam for two days and kicked back.

Steps totally cleaned the bus. It was one thing he was really good at and this was the third time he did it since we’d left the Rainbow Gathering. He took everything movable outside and scrubbed down the cupboards and the refrigerator and swept the floor and washed every single dirty dish and every pot and pan. Ellie helped him to a degree but mostly it was Step’s project. He. said he couldn’t stand living in filth.

That afternoon Steps met up with some partying folks and that night he came into the bus in the middle of the night all wild and wacked out of his mind. Fuck! I sure hadn’t bargained for his alcohol problem when I told him I’d give him a ride to Oregon. What a headache he was! Of course after he slept it off and ate some aspirin and a big breakfast he was his old semi-congenial satiated self again.

Our next stop was Deadwood, South Dakota. The old wildwest town was full of museums and points of interest. We enjoyed walking around, seeing the sights. I made another hundred bucks by selling a couple of bikes. Steps wanted to know how much of the money was his. He said we ought to split it fifty-fifty.

Holy Cow! I’m the one who had invested time and money into rebuilding the bikes. How could anyone be so irrational? That booze sure went to his brain. Yet he was adamant. Now he was claiming that I couldn’t manage the Bike Bus without him!

I was worried for Ellie’s sake. Steps always chose to occupy the front passenger seat where Ellie used to sit. So Ellie sat in the rocker behind us or way back on the bed. As Steps and I conversed I could plainly see that Ellie felt left out. With her sitting back there it was extra hard for me to sense her moods or to smooth her rumpled feathers. There is a very good chance that would account for her disappearance for those thirty hours in Hotsprings South Dakota. This was serious. I didn’t like ignoring Ellie and I missed her company -- especially when compared with cantankkerous Steps. And it obviously wasn’t an insignificant or inconsequential problem. I sure didn’t want Ellie to feel so left out that she might try to leave again. I shuddered to think of her wandering around alone in the strange streets of that strange land.... What if someone picked her up and drove her fifty miles away and then dropped her off???? It was tearing me up inside. Freaking out my heart! I absolutely had to do something. I needed to have some time alone with Ellie to assure her that I loved her and that I didn’t want her to feel she was in second place to anyone.

So I had a talk with Steps. I told him I was sorry we were taking so long to get to the west coast but that’s the way it often was for us. And things were likely to continue about the same. If it wasn’t one problem delaying us it was another. I reminded him that if he got on the freeway and stuck out his thumb he could possibly be on the west coast inside of twenty-four hours. Darn near anyway.

He responded with moans and groans about how I had agreed to take him all the way there and how I was just trying to get rid of him now, and after all the work he had done too... No, that wasn’t it, I told him. Then I told him the whole truth, about how I was worried about Ellie; how I wanted to spend more quality time with her; how I was worried that she felt left out, ignored.

He said he couldn’t see it. He said I was talking bullshit. Yeah, I knew he wouldn’t be able to accept the truth of what I said. He never could. When he was drinking he loved to go on about how I didn’t really love Ellie. And drunk or sober he often asserted that Ellie was incapable of loving anyone, that she was too simple for such complex emotions. It teed me off that he would say those things, I just told him he was wrong but I didn’t let him get my goat which was what he was always really trying to do anyway.

When we got to Interstate 90 we let Steps off on the highway. I gave him five dollars. He wanted more. I told him I was sorry but I would need my money for gas and repairs. Five dollars would have to do. We shook hands. Goodbye Steps...

Ellie and I took a smaller highway and headed towards Wyoming. Ellie sat in the front seat and we talked.

We met an Indian woman in a gas station who told us we should stop in to visit the Crow reservation when we got to Montana. She emanated some heavy and beautiful charismatic energy and I knew I wanted of meet her people. So I kept it in mind.

We took our time and stopped long and often. Two days later we got on highway 90 again and hoped we wouldn’t run into Steps. But that wasn’t likely, slow as we were moving compared to everything else on the road. Steps probably was already in Oregon.

We stopped in at the wrecking yard in Butte where we had stopped on the way east. We needed another couple of used tires. A crusty oldtimer tackled the mounting of those tires. I believe he couldn’t have done it at all if he was hoarse. His cussing seemed more important to the job than the tire irons.

I also took the opportunity to install the transmission that I had bought from them on the way east. That job took the better part of the afternoon but it was just big tinker toys and went fairly smoothly. We spent the night and rolled out in the morning.

About thirty miles east of Billings we encountered signs advertising the Crow reservation PowWow, at the next offramp. The reservation bordered the freeway.

We pulled off and drove through the Indian town. Wide eyes stared at the Bike Bus. Children poked their parents and exclaimed, “Look, Look, mama! All the bicycles!” We fixed a lunch and ate it on the grass in the town’s park and felt out the situation. I thought we ought to go to the PowWow. Surely we’d have a good time. Maybe we’d even sell and repair some bikes, and make a little much needed money. So we asked directions and were soon amidst the thick traffic heading for the fairgrounds.

The large parking areas were filling up with cars. Wow! Teepees! As far as the eye could see, hundreds of tall white canvas teepees stood amidst trees and the sky, and Indians in fine clothing rode beautiful horses. We parked in a centrally located area and were immediately subjected to the close scrutiny of a crowd of Indian kids. Some of the children were on horseback. They wheeled their animals and raced against each other for my cameras. One child who couldn’t have been more than five years old seemed especially remarkable the way he kept up with all the other older children on his full-sized horse. What a blessing it must be to be an Indian child, to race a horse who is your friend through sunsets and prairie flowers; to race alongside brothers and cousins; to laugh from the heart.

We stayed at the PowWow for three days. I videoed a Fancy Dance competition and ate some great Indian cooking.

I sold two bikes for a sum total of seventy dollars, so it didn’t cost us anything to be there. Some Indian kids managed to steal from us successfully. Late the first night they got a good BMX and some mag wheels. It’s kind of exasperating: like I’d really like to just give stuff away, but it’s my livelihood... The next night Ellie and I awoke in the dark to hear the sounds of Indian children whispering just outside the open window beside our bed. Delicate metal sounds accompanied their muffled voices. Clearly they were trying to untie a bicycle or get at some wheels or other bike parts. Unseen in the dark I stuck my head out the window -- I must have been two feet or less from them -- and I said gently but sternly.

“Leave the bikes alone kids. We’re trying to sleep.”

There was just a moment of silence and a child’s voice answered:

“Ok, mister. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, you rascals...”

Heading west again. We stopped for the morning at the site of Custer’s Last Stand. A US Forest Ranger gave a prepared speech about the battle to a crowd. I was surprised to learn that most of the soldiers who died that day were born in Germany. And I was surprised to learn that several of Custer’s kinfolk died beside him, brothers, uncles and cousins, all with the name “Custer”. The weatherworn gravestones on the side of the windswept hill marked their end. Their spirits ride the wild winds and rear upon the sharp hooves of destiny.

Westward rolled the Conestoga bicycles. In Missoula the MISSOULIAN newspaper ran a front page color photograph of me standing beside the Bike Bus, and a nice article: another great piece for the old scrapbook. Missoula is the place where the Bike Bus was born, back in 1984, so it was a little like coming home. We stayed for three or four days, sold a few bikes, visited with people, and then we rolled again, anxious to reach the sea...

We stopped at Jerry Johnson’s hotsprings on highway 12 in Idaho. Stupid Forestry regulations have destroyed the place. They have made it illegal to be in the springs at night! Nighttime is a wonderful time to soak in the springs, under the stars. Ellie and I have soaked there all night long many times. But now they have made it a crime to soak in the wilderness under the stars!!!! Man! It’s so stupid it makes me sick. I can’t believe they could be so ignorant. The place is my church! I lay in those hotpools all night and contemplate God and Goddess and the Universe and the situation of mankind upon the Earth. Hotsprings have always been exactly this magnificent spiritual thing to the human race. Stonehenge is only a few miles from the ancient hotsprings of Bath England. There were hotsprings near the first human city, Catal Huyuk, eight thousand years ago, and hotsprings in the Aegean when the Minoan civilization formed. The list goes on and on. Hotsprings are sacred to those who understand, to those who are drawn to them. When they close down the springs at night they take all that away from me, from us. That is sheer ignorance on their part. They just don't want to face the fact of what our spiritual lives mean to us. How would they feel if we closed down their churches? Would they take it all cool and calm and just go on without them? God I was MAD. I was so mad I didn’t even go in to the hotsprings. I wrote an anonymous angry note and addressed it to them and tacked it to their stupid sign for all to read. Shit.

And then we came to Washington. We were almost home. The Bike Bus flew down the highway with wings on it’s heels. I ground the gas pedal into the floorboard. There were some long downhill miles and that seemed an open invitation for the old Bike Bus to attain rare speeds. By rare speeds I mean about a constant 65 mph. Normally the bus never went over fifty. We were flying.

But we were flying too fast!! Suddenly there was a clatter of crunching metal and the engine died. We coasted silently along the freeway while I thought some very miserable thoughts. I pulled the Bike Bus over to the side of the Interstate. What a time to blow up the engine…

At least we’d made it into the state of Washington. It sure would have been worse if it had happened back in South Dakota or Montana. Washington wasn’t so bad...

But the Interstate was bad. The tow company ghouls gouge HUGE chunks of money flesh off people who get their buses stuck on Interstates. I could hear them slobbering and drooling and dragging their chains. I could feel them dreaming about my wallet...

A look on the map told me Moses Lake was the nearest town, thirty miles up ahead. I dug out my thick tow rope and stood behind the bus and watched the traffic pass on the Interstate. If an old truck came along I intended to make wild gestures with the tow rope which I hoped would be interpreted to mean that I needed a tow to the next town -- although I suppose it’s possible that someone might translate it to mean that I was going to hang myself and was in desperate need of an audience.

Every vehicle seemed to be a new car. There’s no way any new compact car was going to try to tow the huge Bike Bus thirty miles. I couldn’t believe it! Not a single old truck! What’s the state of the world coming to when every car on the Interstate is new and shiny and smells like a showroom? And there me and Ellie are; stuck on the side of their Interstate in our fifty year old bus, looking for assistance. How presumptuous of us... I felt like shit.

And I was worried. It is not legal to hitchhike on the Interstate. I could get a large fine. Or the fact that my vehicle insurance had lapsed could easily be discovered by any inquisitive officer: another huge fine. The cop would call a tow truck. The bill could be as much as five hundred dollars to tow us thirty miles. It would be impounded in a storage yard at twenty dollars a day until we paid the bill. We’d lose the bus. We could keep our personal property -- but where would we put it? We’d have a side-of-the-road garage sale. The $600 Martin guitar would go for forty dollars. The 18 speed Reynolds 531 Trek touring bikes would sell for $30 each. Our 12 volt Emerson 13 inch color tv would bring us $15. All my old hardcover books, including the antiques and the Rubyatt collection would bring me $10. The two canoes might bring $20 each...

I continued to stand there dreaming those morbid dreams and hoping that no cop would notice us. That would be the end. Our only hope was that someone would come along and tow us off the freeway before the cops got to us. Our only hope...

A man in a compact car pulled over and offered to stop in the next town and call us a tow truck. I told him not to bother, We didn't need one. God! That is all we'd need is some local tow company that was getting rich off of unfortunate people who broke down on the Interstate coming and charging us more money than we had, and impounding our bus until we paid the bill. No fella. Don't even THINK about calling a tow company. I was really worried and upset.

An hour passed. Finally I saw an old pickup truck coming my way. He saw me too -- and pulled over. The pickup truck was pretty big, probably a one ton, and four wheel drive. The young fellow was a ranch hand. He was only going ten miles, but I looked at the map and noticed there was a rest area eleven miles up the road. He said he’d tow us there. And as it turned out, his rig had no difficulty doing that.

The rest area was a salvation. We were stuck no longer on the side of the road at the mercy of the next cop and his cronies, the ghouls from the towing company. Ellie cooked up some chow. We could just hang out as long as necessary until someone came along who could tow us to Moses Lake. At least no one would bother us for the rest of the day. So we watched and waited.

Several hours passed. A little old orange and white half-ton 1958 Chevy pick-up truck pulled in with two country hippies in the cab. It looked like the truck was probably powered by a six cylinder engine. I figured that it might not normally be the perfect rig to tow us anywhere, but I knew instinctively that the hippy brothers would understand my situation and want to help. Since this area of the Interstate was mostly flat and even slightly downhill I figured that little pick-up truck of theirs just might manage to get us all the way to Moses Lake.

The fellows scratched there heads and looked from their little truck to my big Bike Bus and at each other and at me and back to the truck and the Bike Bus again. The driver looked at his shoes and up to me and he said he figured he could give it a try. He added that he must be crazy, though, huge as my Bike Bus was and small as his little Chevy pickup truck was… So we attached the tow rope and off we went.

All we had to do was go twenty more miles without blowing up his little motor or his old worn clutch. And of course, we had to have some good luck, because if a cop saw us he might get a big ticket. When you’re in trouble you can’t beat hippy brothers for a helping hand.

And the miles passed. That little truck was “the little engine that could”. There were a couple fairly big hills too. But the little truck just pulled us up and over them, albeit slowly.

They pulled us right into Moses Lake. I shook hands with my brothers and gave them both hugs. Much obliged, amigos. Live long and prosper. The world would be a sorry place without people like you.