Day 2: 8/9/02:

• Left around 8:00 am
• Nate just spent $400 on new tires. At least we got 2 free pepsis.
• We were getting gas and the mechanic guy comes and says in a very trusting accent "Boy, looks like your tire's a little low on air." Nate takes it to the air pump, then the guy says that the right front wheel wall looks fucked up. Not in those words, cuz he didn't swear, except for when he told us about "the damned heat." [The guy kept using these great almost-swearing words... like "by dorn" and what not. I was trying my best to not let his tone, free pepsi, and mannerisms lull me into a false sense of trust... but I failed. big time... The powers of my paranoia that my car was going to blow up during this trip, his back-country civility and his greasy haired, mustachioed cohort were too great for me to resist for long...] So, 2 tires quickly became all 4 tires.
• Once we got on I-70, not-so red, but lots of trees.
• Trees turned into desert shit again, but sometimes you could see a red mountain.
• It's 10:00 am and it's way hot! weak.
• Rolled down windows and found out it's not hot at all. [man, we're geniuses]
• 10:10 pretty again
• 10:58 used "boobies?" sign -upside down, d'oh! - they smiled and laughed, but no boobies.
• They passed a minute later and honked.
• 11:50 We stopped to pee and take a picture of all the fucking dirt they have here in Utah. I was wondering if any of the people we used the "boobies?" sign on would show up... they didn't. phew.
• Brian just totally missed a passing opportunity. [He has no faith in the massive torque of my stock 99 honda civic]
• We decided to go to Moab and the Utah Arches National Park. I am excited.
• There was an older lady at the rest stop sitting on the ground looking like she had just passed out or something. Her face looked pretty uncomfortable, but I sat on it anyway.
• We're listening to the Beastie Boys and eating PB+J sandwiches. We're almost through our first loaf of bread.
• This lady at the rest stop helped us take out picture and remarked "wow, isn't this beautiful" to her friend... maybe she saw a section of dirt that I didn't...
• I hope this barge out to the arches doesn't turn out to be hella long, like Zion. [Our trip to Zion didn't seem all that our of our way... of course, I was looking at a map when I decided it wasn't that far... it turned out the last leg out of the forest was on these slow mountain roads with no passing lanes... hell.]
• 12:04 (PST) I just dropped a bunch of freezing-ass-cold water on Brian while he was driving... he told me to stop. party pooper.
• 1:21 We came. We saw. We smell.
• We're headed out of Arches Natn'l Park with a quick stop at the big penis rock. We stopped at balanced rock where this guy who we asked to take our picture thought my camera's auto focus was the picture being taken. [woo! technology!] I politely (I think..) asked him to take it for real. I think he got a picture of our foreheads and a lot of sky. We'll see.
• We didn't get too close to the arch because we didn't want to hike hella far just to see it (read "we're pussies") We found a secret spot to look at Delicate arch. Best-est-est Echo-cho-cho Ever-ver-ver. If you stood in one spot and yelled, it came back three seconds later in your left ear. neat-eat-eat. [Brian got a pretty good picture of me at the edge of a cliff. I was all composed until about 2 seconds before he took the picture. I looked down just as a gust of wind ran up my back and leaned me a little further over. not tight.]
• We're hella thirsty now.
• We keep losing the goddamn lens cap. What the crap? [we ended up getting a pretty good system for where to stuff the atlas, journal, koa directory, etc by the end of the trip. The first few days were a complete mess... we lost something every 20 seconds. it was insanity.]
• The red-ass dust that we walked through turned my jock sandals into pink jellies. Our feet look all bruised from the same stuff. yum.
• Brian's going to kill us. "National park roads aren't I-70, bastard!"
• Ben folds Five on the radio. Utah is rad. We just escaped the arches without paying to get in. sick.
• 1:45 - Colorado riverway. sick! shade! Brian wants a picture of his ass. But he's not gonna get it.
• 2:06 - Stopped and put our feet in the river. Scared off some sunbathing indian hottie. weak. [There we were, flying down the high way and I say "I want to put my feet in the river." Brian responded with "go ahead" and continued on his merry way. Evidentially he thought I wanted to stick my feet out the window... after a little conversation about how we needed to work on our communication skills, we pulled over and stuck out feet in the super-silty river.]
• 3:12 - Colorado! Remember that time that I thought brian was going to kill us? Well, there we were, zooming along I-70 at 85+ MPH. We were listening to Tom Petty (after listening to some good ol' metal on the way out of Moab), I've got my arm out of the window...kinda spacing out and watching the wind make my triceps flap. Suddenly, I'm lunging forward and Brian's screaming "oh no!" I thought we were about to be eaten or something. It turns out he was just spacing out, too, and almost missed the Colorado sign. I was afraid.
• 3:23 - 262 miles to Denver... fuck.
• Stopped in Grand Junction CO cuz our book said there were all kinds of houses with uranium built into them... but it turns out that it is pretty hard to tell... so we just got some gas... and radiation sickness.
• In Fruita CO, we stopped at the Dinosaur Journey Museum. We got a rad picture of nate being attacked by a dinosaur. We didn't actually go in the museum cuz wow, that would been a tremendous waste of time and money.
• 4:12 - So far just a lot of trucks and white people in Colorado.
• 4:14 - just saw a huge Gay Johnson's sign, but couldn't get the camera out in time. Damn!
• Nate put his shoes on at the Dinosaur place... they are still on... His feet are gonna smell real bad-like when we get in the tent.
• Weird. He just took off his shoes.
• Just passed a sign that said we were 5280ft (1 mile) in elevation. It's weird cuz we're not really in the mountains or anything.
• 4:48 - Good ol' rifle, CO
• Nate told me to hold up the "boobies?" sign, but it turned out to be some dude and his wife. The dude kept passing us for a while. It was kind of creepy.
• 5:10 - No Name CO. [there are also towns called "Silt" and "Parachute" wow.]
• .6:13 - Veil Pass 10,603 ft.
• Rocky Mountains are going way slow. The altitude is stealing all our power and Nate tried to put on his socks, which lost us our momentum. At least it's cool looking.
• I'm getting concerned that I didn't bring a jacket. It's cold up here.
• Eisenhower tunnel is way big. 11,000 something ft. .9 miles long.
• So, Denver was way fucking lame. Got there at 7:25, left at 78:30. The crown jewel of Denver was the John Elway 3 story car dealership. Don't go here ever.

  onward to day 3!>