New York was drizzly when I left, which kind of matched my mood. I wasn't thrilled to be driving off into the rain, and considered waiting another day, but it was supposed to be wet and icky all week, so probably the faster I drove out of it the better, I reasoned. I loaded up my gear and got on the West Side Highway, headed north toward the George Washington Bridge.

Unfortunately, the rain followed me, through New Jersey, and into Pennsylvania. My trip wasn't off to a very auspicious beginning. Eventually, the rain got so heavy I could barely see the cars in front of me, or even the interstate. I decided to get off the road and wait it out.

The first place I saw was a church.

What could be safer than a church? I saw someone gesturing from the open doorway, and reasoned that it had to at least be quieter inside the church, so I hustled in, covering my head with my purse.

"Welcome," the kind man said. "Are you here for the concert?" He smiled at me.

Oh no. Was I going to get kicked out?

"No, I'm sorry, I'm just sheltering from the rain," I said, trying to look trustworthy and honest.

"Oh, well, that's fine. I didn't think you looked like a Mennonite," he said, smiling again. He continued with his task, setting out song books which had his own smiling face on it. He had stacks of them, hundreds. But he wasn't putting them in the main worship room or whatever you called it (seriously lapsed Catholic here, sorry), he was setting up in the front, like a book signing.

"What kind of concert?" I asked, unable to contain my curiosity. "Are you an--um--Mennonite?"

A Mennonite concert?

"Oh, no," he responded with a laugh. "I'm a Baptist. But I write songs for our church, and some of them got very popular, so we published them, and some of my Mennonite fans wrote asking me to come and do a signing and singalong, you know, so I finally let them buy me a plane ticket and came. Luckily I left my hotel and got here before the rain got too bad--"

Mennonite fans? Bought him a plane ticket? Hotel room?

I had visions of Mennonite women screaming at this very nice man as he sang about Jesus, whipping off their white, starched caps and throwing them at him as he gyrated his hips onstage.

Surely not?

He told me that he was expecting about four hundred Mennonites to come tonight and buy his autographed songbooks, then they would enter that worship room and have a singalong with him, which the Mennonites would consider the high point of their year.

Wow.

🌧🇺🇸🌤🇺🇸🌤🇺🇸🌤🇺🇸🌧

I was sitting on a bench outside, in Cheyenne, enjoying the sunshine, when a woman came and sat next to me. There were many empty benches, so I was a bit leery. Especially because she was wearing a housecoat.

Perhaps this was normal in Cheyenne? I looked around, but no, everyone was wearing regular clothes. There was a gigantic, thirty foot boot across the street, but I was willing to ignore that. Back to the woman. In the housecoat. She also had rollers in her hair. Covered by a scarf. And the scarf in turn was covered by pigs taking big bites out of apples. So okay, maybe she'd just forgotten to get dressed. The lady did appear to be pushing it in years, maybe approaching ninety. In cowboy boots?

She had a plate of shrimp tartlets, covered with foil.

She uncovered them, and offered me one.

I declined.

She grabbed one for herself, covered the plate, crunched it with gusto, and picked up her iPhone, where she carefully chose a song to listen to. This took some time, for she was looking for the perfect song.

Aha. She'd found it.

It was "Heartbeat," by Tony DeFranco.

https://youtu.be/I3Iw2qYtN8A

Ever heard it? You should, it rocks.

Next, she went to her Tinder profile, and began swiping, quickly, with great energy. She apparently approved of a great many of her possibilities, because that lady was swiping right a lot. A lot.

She was getting more action on Tinder than me.

How humiliating.

🦂☀️🦂☀️🦂☀️🦂☀️🦂☀️🦂

I continued westward, and the landscape got more arid and desolate looking. I realized I was following in the footsteps, or wagon wheel marks, of the doomed Donner party. I looked around at the hostile, desperate desert, and tried to imagine how hopeless my life would have to be for a trip through this with oxen, horses, wagons, children and babies in impending winter to seem like a good idea?

Finally, after five days of driving, I arrived in California, realizing that the trip had been anything but uneventful or boring. I'd met a Mennonite pop star, a ninety-year-old woman who apparently got busier than I did, seen a thirty foot tall cowboy boot, and that was just the stuff that came right off the top of my head.

Maybe I'd have time to write about all the weird stuff that happened right in our own back yard later.