So now the story has turned into a road trip. Sorry, not the zany fun kind of road trips that Bing Crosby and Bob Hope went on all the time in the movies. Those were cool. Ours never seem to include sheiks in Morrocco or exotic Austrian actresses that are playing Balinese princesses. Mary won’t even dress up in the Balinese princess costume I bought her from Etsy. Says its demeaning or something. I think it just promotes cultural understanding, just my humble attempt to bring a little more tolerance to the world.
We decided to go north, hang a left and check out the states of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and finally Washington. As it turned out, Idaho was a new state for both of us. I mean, Idaho has been a state since 1890, but we’ve never been there before so it hasn’t been quite real till now. I think we’re down to just a few states left to visit to fill out our wall size map of the fifty states. There’s the Dakotas, Vermont and maybe, Nebraska. Mary contends getting diverted to Wisconsin because of a fuel leak doesn’t actually count as visiting the state, but I contend that since I had to change planes, I did actually set foot on the sacred soil of the Wolverine State, and thus it’s almost like I was a native son.
The smoke from the fires in Colorado (there are multiple ones, something I didn’t mention, because only the ones that affect me count, and I don’t like having attention diverted from me and my crisis) continued to follow us all the way into Montana. Eight hours on the road and we finally found some non-hazy air.
We stopped for the night in Billings. The motel was serviceable, as in clean, safe, and not full of partying biker gangs. Our standards, when on the road, aren’t all that high. The best part was the restaurant. We used Yelp as we approached the metropolis of Billings to find someplace, preferably non-chain, to eat. As I was opening the app, Mary said something along the lines of, ‘oh, you never take me anyplace fancy.” So of course the first entry in Yelp was for the Fancy Sushi Asian Fusion restaurant (which is totally not a made up name). We figured if worse came to worse we could always get a couple of candy bars to tide us over, so we took the plunge.
Well, I will say this. There were actually guys wearing sushi chef outfits behind a sushi bar. And they actually served raw fish. Not good raw fish, but not horrible, either. Mary, who chickened out from the sushi, got a pretty good Thai curry dish (it did say Asian Fusion after all). Overall, it was better than we expected, given the name, so I guess that goes to show me something about judging a book by its cover or some such life lesson. I try not to garner too much knowledge from these, it would lead to enlightenment, and I’m quite comfortable with a materialistic view of the universe, especially as long as there are good cigars and fine wines in it
Tomorrow – Idaho or bust!
Oh, and yes, if you’re interested, the scanner is still safe.