It was the summer of 1991. Alternative Music was a year away, the radios were blasting top ten hits from the likes of Warrant, Skid Row, Poison, Gloria Estefan, Paula Abdul,...

"I'm a cowboy, on a pale horse I ride..."

The American populace was poised on the brink of the next Big Thing. And two young men, born of the same womb, were preparing to light out for the territories. The older, a discontented and embittered post-bacheloriate pushing pizza to make ends meet, drowning his failed relationship sorrows in pitcher after pitcher of kamikazes. The younger looking forward to one more year of intellectually corrupt undergraduate ed. They needed a break. They needed some way to wash the filth of the eighties from their soul, some way to rid themselves of the Ronald Reagan like stupor the rest of the country had fallen into. So they loaded up Ben's colt with a few sundries to keep them occupied (and away from the potential positioning of at each other's throats), and headed west.

Behind them were worries and questions left unheeded and unanswered. Ahead of lay the great unknown that was the American West beyond the Appalachians, that great hinterland of drooling Republican voters, dust farming subsidy thieves, and Monster-Truck-Rally half-wits.

They were to travel many miles, view many vistas, and eat a truckload of fast food meat and grease between them. They would spend many hours watching in quiet contemplation the white and yellow lines pass beneath their wheels. And they would visit more cities than most Americans, most humans for that matter, might ever hope to see in a lifetime, and fail to get laid in each and every one of them.

Yet on their return both would say that it is the journey itself, and not its outcome, that provides the best rewards. Okay they really said, "Get that bastard the F*** away from me." But, that's to be expected after spending every waking hour together in a compact car, in a tent, in a motel room, beathing each other's air, thinking each other's thoughts, and listening to each others musical choices for the tape deck.

What were the Eighties? The years of Reagan, of spending and loan crises, of coke (not the beverage), and the Yankees sucking, even though they had the best player ever, Don Mattingly. In music we had glam giving over to punk, punk rolling over to heavy metal, heavy metal spawning a tide of L.A. hair bands. There was new wave, new age, rap, girl pop, and Whitney Houston. The cold war ended, nuclear death clouds are held at bay (for the moment), yeah! But the shuttle explodes killing all kinds of cool science-fictiony dreams of the future. Radio was a musical wasteland. Television sold us on MTV. And movies were crap. The idea of the American Culture Machine producing anything more of value was laughable, especially because all the cool artist types were dying of Aids.

Growing up in the eighties was like growing up in a fairytale, except there was no heros, no lovely and kind princesses, just dragons, just wicked step-mothers married to wicked step-dads. You had omnipotent coke-fueled wizards working secret economical magics in their high-riser castles. Huge multi-national, incorporated armies marching this way and that chewing up every acre of liveable space. Red faced, sputtering clerics preaching hate and praying to a god that was conspicuous only in his absence.

Then along come the ninties. Bush is President. We have a war with a Middle Eastern Oil Potentate to secure our President's family investments in the oil economy. And the music still sucked!!

All in all the eighties were a sucking eddy of dispair and to Ben and Matt it didn't look like the nineties would be getting a whole lot better. Ben was well into year eleven of a decades long existential crisis that began at the age of thirteen. Matt was less than enamored of the collegiate holding pen, struggling in the pursuit of two degrees, trying to make some sense of his life so far. Matt, contemplating leaving all this East Coast drudgery behind was looking for a new home, a new place in which to plant some seeds, water them, fertilize, and quietly wait for what may be. Ben needed a change, something new, something to rid him of the oppressive malaise of post-collegiate dream failure, a reset button. This trip was a way for both to clear the slate and move forward with renewed vigor and hope, and perhaps a way to stock up their anecdotal ponds.

(Flash forward, year 2000. In retrospect the ninties basically sucked also. But older and wiser, I now know its neither the time nor the place that defines you. Time and place are window dressing, mere plot vehicles. What makes you happy, ultimately, is choosing to be happy in spite of all the shit thrown your way. Yadda-yadda yadda, back to the story.)

Enough with the expositional rants. Here's the story in pictures and words from the boys, themselves. Enjoy.