8/29/13, Day Nine, Salt Lake City, UT

  Do you ever have moments where you think to yourself, 'Well, this is my life. This is what I'm doing with my life. Right now. This is happening. I am actually talking to this person. I am actually driving down this highway. I am actually taking an explosive shit in a McDonald's bathroom while the fries and coke I just bought is sitting on the diaper changing station.'

  Because lately, that's been happening to me a lot.

  Let's see, I'll do a quick rundown of past events....

  Montana can ess a dee. The state and I have never gotten along (a road trip long ago hit some unpleasant strife in MT) and it hasn't warmed up to me since. Of course, I used to say that sort of thing about Oregon, and now I live in the damn state. On 8/25 I went to Red Magpie Beads, in Helena, and overall it wasn't a bad sale. Regular customers kept popping in and seeing stuff they wanted. All the ladies were very nice, but I just have to be a dick and mention how being in the middle states has been a stern reminder to wear lots of sunscreen, eat mostly salad, and exercise. I know we're not going to be beautiful forever, age catches up with everyone, but....damn. When it's an effort to get out of a chair and walk three feet, it's time to have some real talk with yourself.

  8/26 was my first taste of "go fuck yourself", at least in the salesman sense. I got to Left Brooks Beads right on time, was my nice, normal self, introduced myself to, I forget her name so I'll say, Cuntbo Baggins, and asked what she'd like to see. I wheeled the large stack of bead boxes to her office, didn't raise a fuss when she asked me to carry the crates over her dog gate, and yet every single box I set in front of her, she dismissed as too expensive. Which is odd, since she's been a client for years, and knows damn well how much everything is. In six minutes, it was pretty clear she wasn't going to buy even my cheapest beads, and I bid her a good day. Maybe it's the probiotics I've been taking, but it didn't really vex me all that much. Better she wastes six minutes of my day, than an hour. But it was pretty out of the blue. Maybe somebody pissed in her corn flakes that morning. Who knows? Though, if I opt to keep this job and have an appt with her again, I'm going to really look forward to calling to cancel it.

  8/27. After Helena, I drove to my new least favorite place in Montana, Great Falls. It's hard to explain why this city, the Electric City, as it's called for some reason, is so shitty. But hell, what else do I have to do? Watch the shitty cable in my motel room? Feh. First off, GF's civic planners did the number one thing I hate about city design: designate all the streets as numbers, but the north-south are "streets" and the east-west are "avenues". Like, where is the Oriental Massage parlor that offers "body shampoos" (really)? Oh, it's on 4th st and 12th avenue. REALLY? There are over 300,000 words in the english language. Pick one. For instance, Where is the shitty sandwich place called "Staggering Ox" who's claim to fame is that instead of two pieces on bread, they bake bread tubes, hollow them out, and then put the fillings inside so it's like a sandwich cup that's basically just a ton of bread and not very much inside for six bucks and why did I eat there in Helena AND Great Falls???

  Oh that shithole? It's on 2nd and CENTRAL. SEEEEEEE?

  Also, if you're familiar with the phone app called "Foursquare", well, don't ever use it in GF. All I wanted was a plate of pasta, and Foursquare sent me on an Italian food goose chase around the city to residential areas that there's no way a restaurant was EVER there, TWICE, until I just opted for what was hailed as "the second best Chinese food place in Great Falls". It was a buffet. And it also was the only time I've ever wished my chinese food had MORE MSG.

  My appts were no better. Eclipse beads was the first, and the owner, Dawnella, was nice enough. We talked about how public schools are tools of communist and socialist societies, and similar topics. Then, as she was writing out her check for 366 whole dollars, she asked me if I had any other appts in the area. No, I lied. Good, she said, because if she found out we were selling to her competition, she'd stop buying from us. Ok, that's fair, but $366 isn't a very big dick to swing, so I drove to my next appt...two blocks away.

  But I might as well have just left, because the living mummies at HobbyLand, a place that had more model train merchandise than beads took an hour to buy $149 worth. Which is actually a dollar less then Nirvana's required minimum for sales, but hell if I was going to drag it out to tag another 14 cents onto my already pathetic commission. There was a box in the display that held the decorations for model train dioramas that was simply labeled "DEAD TREES". I somehow identified with that box.

  Done with both appts, I hopped in my van to gas up for the drive to Missoula (three and half hours) but NO! The credit card was declined. YAY! After a hour of Nir finding out what was going on, and me making the mistake of falling for the ol' sandwich in a tube gag again, Visa turned the card back on, and I was off.

  That night, in the casino/bar of the Broadway Inn in Missoula, I discovered something: when you're used to drinking at 150 feet (Portland's elevation), drinking at 4040 feet feels a whole lot different. I don't remember if I had three beers, and two whiskeys, or four beers and three whiskeys but needless to say, I got duhrunk fast.

  Let's see, blah blah blah....is this interesting at all?

  Anyway, for various reasons (deaths in the family, etc), my schedule has gotten all fucked up, and the last few days have been A LOT of driving for crap sales. Donald is flailing, booking stupids appts because that's all he can get, and I'm spending whatever money I make on motels and food. I'm trying to keep calm about everything, but it's draining to drive six hours for a $416 sale, and then drive another 5 hours to go to client that hasn't bought much, ever.

  Plus, I really need to do laundry.

  Ok, this blog is boring even me. Cable sounds nice at this point. Though I will add that Nir keeps calling to let me know that he knows this part of the trip has sucked, and he's going to compensate me for it. Plus, I'm almost to Colorado, and will get a few days off to hang out with friends (and see how fast I get drunk at 6000 feet!)

  Oh, and if you're ever in Salt Lake City, and I don't know why you would be, you should go to Red Iguana on N Temple. Pretty good Mexican food for...you know, SLC.

  Here's a bunch of pictures that looked a whole lot cooler when I was looking at them with my eyes, but hell, since I risked my stupid life to take them at 70 mph, I may as well post em!

This bunny was at the KOA in Great Falls, which really, was the best thing about Great Falls.

 I wish I'd gotten a better picture of this guy. He has an eyepatch.

After a while, I realized I was pretty much taking the same picture over and over, but when I'm in the car for hours at a time, pretty things are all I have to keep me entertained.

I stopped, and sat on that rock with my feet in the river for a while. 

And this wasn't even the top of the mountain. The summit was 6010 feet. I did not have any beers there.

The one good thing about Hobby Land in Great Falls. EPIC DEAD THINGS DIORAMA.

Pretty much how I felt the whole time in Montana.

8/24/13, Day Four, Helena, Montana

  Where to begin? How about I can't fucking believe it's only been four days since I left Portland. Time seems to speed up when I sleep in a different place every night, and I've definitely spent more time awake than asleep. I can think of a bunch of things to write, but usually at the end of the day I'm too cracked out to do it. But tonight I can stay up a little late, because for one, I'm not in a campsite, I'm on a king sized bed in a Super 8, and because I can actually sleep past six for the first time in a week. I'd rather be watching the Tosh.0 marathon on tv right now, but for you, dear readers, I'll try...

  8/21/13 La Grande, OR. My appt was at a place called Faerie Beads and Gifts, and it looked exactly like it should look. And when the proprietor's name is Dancing Hands, I would expect nothing less (though eventually she introduced herself as "Phyllis"). All she wanted to look at was my semi precious stones (cue ball jokes) and as soon as she saw the crates, she insisted on organizing all four. I mentioned that I'm an artist, and she demanded I draw her a fairy (sorry, FAERIE) while she looked through the stones. She kept haggling me for discounts, and eventually I felt I was being glamoured, though in the end she spent $1500. The whole appt lasted five hours, which meant I had to cancel my tentative one later...and also that I listened to FIVE HOURS of Celtic music.

  8/21/13 Lewiston, ID. I called Chuck at Golden Gifts to say I'd be late, and he was fine with it. Three hours later I rolled into his driveway and he came out with his jewelers magnifying visor still on. He reminded me of Jack Nance's role in Twin Peaks, and he had an oddly comforting smell; like the leather of an old Cadillac. His shop is right next to the trailer he and his wife, Virginia live in, so my tardiness was fine. And it turned out he wanted to look at stones too, so it was great that Dancing Phyllis had organized them all. We chatted as he looked through and told me more than I ever wanted to know about them. Eventually, I noticed it was getting late and tried to book a motel, only to find that almost everything in town was booked (later, Chuck would tell me that it was because of Lewiston's "Hot August Nights", a car and music festival). Chuck offered his couch to sleep on, his garage to store the van in, and to take me out to dinner with the gift cards he'd won in a photography contest. After the sale, I backed my van into a former boat garage, Chuck locked it, and we were on our way. As he veered off on a dark side street, I had about a 30 second window of cold realization that I had no access to my van, and not very many people knew where I was and maybe Chuck was going to take me to the docks and murder me...but he was only trying to get into Tomato Bros. the back way. After a nice dinner where Chuck (who's real names is Charles Browne, heh) told me stories of his youth, kicking around Oregon, bouncing at bars, and touring with a local band called "Tease" who let him sell his rings on stage during set breaks (apparently Chuck got more pussy than the band) we headed back to his trailer. He had three exotic fish tanks, and a dog named Sister with a gimpy paw. I woke up the next morning...and I didn't feel drugged, nor was my butthole sore. Chuck is just a really nice dude.

  8/22/13 Rathmund, ID. Not much interesting about this appt. Two very sweet ladies who bought a decent amount of stuff.

  8/22/13, Spokane, WA. This one was at SewEZtoo, a sewing store with a bead section. I swear, I think every woman who works at a sewing/fabric store has been beaten and/or raped at least half her life. I'm not saying that to be funny; such sad, worn down ladies. Nice, but timid, or cold. The most interesting thing that happened while the two buyers picked through the boxes while their supervisor breathed over their shoulders was the supervisor's daughter. I never caught her name, but let's call her Vickie. Vickie was 46, and had a pretty heavy case of Down's Syndrome. She sat across the table from me and the whole time was doing one of three things: she had at least 500 well worn playing cards in four stacks in front of each other. She would pick up about twenty, fan them out in her hand, re-arrange them for a while, and occasionally either yawn, or get intensely happy looks on her face. Or, she would be looking up something on her iPad, or iPhone (with a zebra print case) but she would hold ether of them an inch away from her face the whole time. Or she would interject a comment into whatever conversation that really, while not particularly interesting, or relevant could have come from someone who didn't have the excuse of a mental handicap. I really could have watched Vickie all day. (Side note: as I watched her, I came up with the theory that all the things she was doing that made no sense to the rest of us, and everyone ignored WERE ACTUALLY SUPER IMPORTANT because she was a MIB type alien agent, or spy. She was just a mole, of sorts, disguised as the last person you'd think was running a top secret mission for another race. Yeah, and SHE'S the retard...)

8/22/13, Spokane, WA. Downtown Spokane is a shithole, by the way, and pay not mind to the Satellite Diner being the top rated restaurant. My tuna melt was B-, at best, and the clientele was a bit scary. One dude had one of those scars that you get from someone sticking a knife in your mouth and carving a smile line up your face. And a neck tattoo. Anyway, I tried to move up my last appt, but the client never called me back, so I went to an Army surplus store to get supplies to make a cargo net for the van, since I'd brought too much shit. After buying some fishing net, hooks, and duct tape, I downright impressed myself with my ingenuity, and soon had a place to store my sleeping bag and guitar. I drove to the client's house, only to find she was not there. Her family informed me she was at the gym...blah blah blah...you know, when she showed up, she was super nice, and so was her family, but nothing really all that interesting happened so I'll just skip to:

8/23/13 Kalispell, MT. After spending the night in Coeur D'Alene, I drove up to Kalispell, and would have made the three and half hour drive with ten minutes to spare...had my phone map decided that the address was to the west of the highway, instead of where it actually was to the east. But, Cindy was fine when I got to Powder Horn Trading Company, a gun/western wear/gift/bead shop. She poked through the beads, asked about Amal, and told me that on his last go round, Amal had been burnt out, and was looking forward to dating again. In fact, most of the appt was her giving me the impression that she thought I would burn out on this job pretty quick. After a modest sale, the last thing her husband said to me as he bought a rifle from a dude was, "Your girlfriend won't be there when you get back!" Thanks, dick. That night I camped at another RV site, next to a quiet stream, and a loud Mexican family. I drank a beer and played guitar on the picnic bench, and started to get a "first week of summer camp" kind of feeling. As in "fuck this, I want to go home". Not that I've ever been to summer camp. My mood flattened out, I got surprisingly drunk from one tall bottle of beer, and zonked out in the tent.

8/24/13, Libby, MT. After a shitty night's sleep (I should have packed a pillow...and flip flops for public showers) I got up at seven to drive the two hours west to Libby. Here's something about Montana: you can go 70 mph just about everywhere, and it gets comfortable fast. ALSO, there are many, many reminders of why this might be a bad idea. There are little white crosses mounted on red sticks fucking. everywhere. It would be a fun drinking game to take a drink every time you passed one, except that you'd get wasted, and end up having a cross yourself (and that's probably how most of them died). Sometimes there's one. Sometimes two next to each other, or three. There was one cluster that really must have been a school bus. Fucked up. And there are skid marks everywhere, along with blood splatters from roadkill deer, some of which are still rotting by the side of the road. Other that THAT, it was a lovely drive. The first thing I see when I roll into town in a dude come out of his trailer with a rifle. And not just casually holding it, but more like holding it like you would right before you shoot something. When I got to the place my phone thought Boho beads was, it wasn't, and I called Stephanie, the owner. In a small voice that made me imagine a 60 year old redneck, she gave me long, detailed instructions about how to get to her house, and as I followed them deeper, and deeper into the woods, my mood got bleaker and bleaker. Great, some tweaker in the woods that gonna buy $400 worth, and then I have a fucking five hour drive. Fuck this. But man, sometimes I love to be wrong. Stephanie and her hubby, John, are rich as fuck. At least, that's what their giant house on a giant hill overlooking more giant hills seemed to say, and that impression was backed up two hours later when after a very pleasant appt, she bought $1600 worth of beads. She gave me a pear (that I'm saving for breakfast), and I had lunch at a surprisingly good Mexican place. After a five and half hour drive through some lovely country (and more of the those damn crosses!) I'm shacked up in a Helena.

PUHRETTY!

DIS TOO!

I DUNNO WHY THIS IS HERE!

This is Boho beads. Not the meth lab I thought it was going to be.

Not a bad day at the office.

These little crosses are EVERYWHERE.

Brutal commute, dude.

  There you go, buddies. I could blab on some more, about all the shit I think about when I'm driving...but that'll have to wait. I beat. I wanna watch more Tosh, jerk off, and sleep sleep sleep. In the meantime, here's more pictures than you ever wanted. ENJOY!

Miles:1,055
Money: I don't know

8/20/13, Day One of the Gran Tourismo of Beads, written from an RV park in La Grande, OR.

  And so it begins. After a week of hanging out with friends, going to the coast with Janine (whom we may as well call my girlfriend from here on in, at least until she finds out about all the whores I plan to bone in truck stops), trying to a trillion loose ends tied up, and entirely too much drinking, I am back on the road. And it sounds like I'm going to be here a while, friends.

  I woke up at four am this morning, and laid there staring at the ceiling making a mental list of what I'd forgotten to pack, until my alarm went off at 5:03 (Portland's area code!) I tried and failed to get up and shower without waking Janine, whom had stayed over for one more night of (this time slightly weepy) love makin'. After some last minute packing, and some tearful goodbyes, I hit the road.

  After I'd had a good cry (damn emotions) I was quickly cheered up by the scenery. Cruising down 84-E, which runs parallel to the Columbia river through what's known as The Gorge. It's all fucking gorgeous, with the golden sunrise breaking through the clouds, lighting up the huge cliff tops, and the morning fog melting off the mountains. I'd show you pictures of that, but I'd forgotten about the digital camera Janine has loaned me. Look it up though. The gorge is beautiful.

  My first appt was in Richmont, WA, which Google maps said was 3 hours, 26 minutes away, and I pulled in right on time. The owner of the shop, Bead All Bug Beads (she couldn't explain that one) A, was hard to place in age, maybe 50's. A case of "it's not the years, it's the miles". She was very friendly, and got right to the point, knew what she wanted, but waited until her son, L, got there to help her make her final decisions. When all was said and done, she'd spent $733.

  Back in the van, before making the hour long drive to Yakima, I played a hunch I had in terms of a confusing scheduling, and called Donald to leave a message that I wasn't sure the appt was a go. Sure enough, he called the shop, and the buyer had fallen ill that day, but hadn't thought to call us. MY BEAD SALESMAN PROWESS IS GROWING DAY, BY DAY!

  Pleased with myself for circumventing a two hour round trip, I got some coffee, ate some snacks from my $50 box of Trader Joe's snacks, and started the drive to La Grande. It was a three and half hour haul, and it got steadily less pretty. I always forget that Oregon and Washington has a lot of desert to it.

  Points about the drive: There was a coupe from Idaho that kept speeding past me doing 80, then I'd pass them pulled over to the shoulder. No idea why. There was an open dump truck filled with onions. Whenever it hit a bump, a few onions would fly out and break apart. I drove through a town white with smoke from what I assume was a wild fire somewhere near. It stank. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I ran over a bird. Sorry, bird. Also, I made a new Pandora station called "Yacht Rock!" that's keeping my spirits high.

  Once in La Grande, a nice enough looking town (though with a lot of Christian influence, it seems) I walked around for a bit, then started looking for a place to settle down. After getting frustrated trying to find a campground, I almost said fuck it, and booked a motel. But at the last minute went to an RV park to ask if they had tent sites. And shit howdy, they do, and only for $21. On the one hand, it's pretty lame to pay $21 to sleep in a tent by the highway, but at least they have wifi, and showers.

  Oh, and I had a brief panic attack when I couldn't find my toiletries bag (which I'm quite proud of, for some reason). I texted Janine with my lament that I'd forgotten it, and she swore she'd seen it sitting on the bead crates. Sure enough, it had fallen between the seats. I told her if she was right, I'd marry her, divorce her, and remarry her. Looks like I've got to start saving for a ring.

  Not that I'm going to see her, or any of my PDX friends, for a long fucking time. Apart from a week break at some point, I'm probably on the road until the first week in December. Woof.

  Ok, time to pass the fuck out. I've got a 9 am appt with a woman named Dancing Hands. Gotta be on point for that.

Miles driven: 531
Money made:$98.96

Not the  Gorge, but still pretty cool looking.

I mean, not when I take a photo of it from a moving car, but hey, I try.

OMG!! A WINDMILL!!! EXOTIC!!!

And then it all turned to fat nothin' for miles.

The most well behaved forest ever.

Why am I even posting this?

Or this? Why would anyone find this interesting? C'mon self, try harder.

It's my hideous bloated face! That doesn't help the scenery much.

The luxurious life of a bead salesman.