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11 January, 2003
40-hour bus ride to the desert

When I began writing music articles for an Edmonton weekly arts and entertainment magazine several years ago, my editor told me that he saw me as the average Joe Q. Public who went down to a show, plunked down his money for cover, took it all in, then wrote about it. I didn't really know what to make of that, but I just kept on goign to shows and writing about them.

For this new years's celebration, I took advantage of an opporunity to engage in the "don't knock it till you try it" line of thought. My fiancee's aunt and uncle own a condominium down south where the weather is warmer. We decided to go there this year. So at 12:30 a.m. on Boxing Day, the two of us climbed aboard a Greyhound for a 40-hour bus ride.

In many ways it was a remarkable experience; in other ways it was not. In any case, having plunked down my money and gone to see the show, I am going to do my average-Joe thing and write about it.

I can think of few reasons to justify a 40-hour bus ride, and fewer to justify two of them. It was romantic, I guess, in that poor, young, nearly-wed kind of way. It was not fun, though, wandering around the time capsule that is downtown Great Falls, Montana, zombified with fatigue, grumpy with hunger, and searching for a restaurantthat's open at 6 a.m. and that takes credit cards because you've run out of American cash. Thank goodness for Cirrus-compatible bank machines.

There are different styles of bus drivers. One has a nice, soothing voice that gently coaxes you from slumber saying things like "We are now approaching the city of Idaho Falls. After the right turn, I will turn on the interior lights. Those passengers terminating here will need to obtain their baggae from the baggae attendant. Those passengers continuing on, your baggage will be transferred to the appropriate bus for you. The bus conituing on to Salt Lake City will depart from gate 8 at 7:45 p.m. Thank you." The other style violently jerks you awake by barking "I'doh Fawls! Dis is I'doh Fawls!" and leaving the rest up to the alert and vigilant rider to figure out. One highlight was the stopover in Salt Lake City. Did you know that it is prohibited by law in Utah to smoke in any public building or within 25 feet of the entrance to one? Bless the Utah Clean Air Act. Downtown Salt Lake is very pretty and clean. After a while though, it dawns on you, slowly and ominously, that everything you see, from parks to water towers, bears not the name "City of Salt Lake", but "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints". Everything. It's chilling.

For me the best part was the desert. It was not flat, monochrome, and hot. It was mountainous, vividly coloured, and cool. The rock shapes were breathtaking, especially as the I-15 emerges from snaking through bizarrely fascinating mountains into the wide Las Vegas Valley, surrounded on all sides by distant mountain ranges, crisply defined on top, thri outlines softening towards their feet as if water had spilled on the bottom of a drawing. When winding through a part of the desert that looks particularly Martian, with folds and crevasses and peaks and ridges all packed tightly together, it is a shock to descend upon a 221.59 metre-high dam in one the canyons. Absolutely spectacular.

So, where was our destination? If you haven't figured it out, tune in next time!

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