The Drive to Colorado Part Deux

After the Super D, Tim and I drove back to Indianapolis to fetch his silly little clown car. We stopped at Chipotle to grab some giant burritos, he hit on the cash register girl, then we headed back out onto I70. It was already dark.

We drove through the night, and it got hotter as we went west. When we hit Misery around 2am, it was already 90 degrees.


We napped at a rest stop, but after an hour of sitting in the Grumbler, I was drenched in sweat. I woke Tim up and suggested that we press on. As the sun was coming up, we drove into Kansas and decided it would be a good time to make breakfast and poop in a corn field.


The sunrise looked innocent enough.

I turned on the radio to listen to some twangy country stations. It was a nice morning, but the people talking through my dashboard were already issuing high heat warnings, with temperatures of 105 and a heat index of 110 to 120. I took some pictures of the big wind farms while I listened to the ballad of a pissed-off trailer girl. She sang about shooting off her man's dick.


By noon I was fighting to stay awake. We had been driving since 10pm the previous day, and it felt like it was 130 degrees in the un-insulated Grumbler. I tried to pour a big jug of water on myself to cool off, but it was also 130 degrees. It burned my chest.

Kansas had flattened out, and there was nothing but corn. I wanted to light the state on fire so that I had something to look at while we drove. But that would have just made it hotter. I'm convinced that Kansas is hell. I can't believe people actually live there.

Kansas went on and on and on forever. Finally, after six of the most miserable hours of my life, we crossed the line into Colorado. And for two more hours, it looked exactly like Kansas. Fug.

But we started to climb up, and there was scenery again.

I was really excited, but I still couldn't stay awake. I stuck my head out the window. My hat was torn off my head. Damn it. I pulled the Grumbler off the road, and ran up and down a stretch of 70 looking for the poor sweat stained thing.

It was gone. I gave up and sadly went back to the Grumbler. When I turned around to grab a bottle of water, I saw the hat behind my seat. It had blown inside.

I drove off again, swerving occasionally as I succumbed to fatigue and dehydration. The speed limit went up to 75 and Colorado people ripped by me with their foot to the floor. I could smell coolant inside the cab, and my leg was getting cooked next to the gas pedal. Then my idiot light went off. I called Tim, and we pulled over. We were only 35 miles from Denver.

I popped the hood, and steam started gushing. Tim grabbed a rag, and quickly twisted the rad cap off. The radiator vomited everything in a boiling green gush. When it stopped spewing, we filled it with new water and took off again.

We finally hit Denver, and cruised another few miles into Boulder. An hour or so after we pulled into Sam's house, we grabbed our bikes and rode up one of the mountains outside of town.