Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

John B. and I get along great. He’s got long brown hair and a fully-grown goatee. It’s not a look he’s carefully crafted as an alternative fashion statement either, his goatee comes from being genuinely unkempt. Loose overalls and t-shirts, a carefree attitude and genuinely nice. John’s the same age as I am but he owns half of the Karma Kafe’, a pretty successful business that guarantees he has major bank. I think maybe he likes me because I’m a fresh face that doesn’t hang out in his place all the time. I think he finds it refreshing that I’m not trying to gloss him over with hippy peace and love while trying to scam vegan sandwiches on the side. Plus we have the bond of being obsessed over the same girl and having to watch her go on a road trip all the fucking way across the country, to the same place, without either one of us. We share the spurned lover bond. Ha!

The other two guys going with us are also pretty cool. We kind of all met briefly, checked out the van and had a little smoke out together. It was kind of an introduction, to make sure I’m not a cop or a dickhead before we travel across the United States together kind of thing. There’s another John with really short hair that plays conga (pronounced cooonga) drums, who is all hyped about finding a drum circle at the shows and another guy named Mike who resembles a red Viking giant. One thing is for sure, if the pre-trip smoke session is any indicator, the marijuana will flow like water.

All three of them know a hell of a lot about the Grateful Dead, which is good because I don’t have much time to cram familiarity into my thick head. My plan is to absorb as much of their music as I can on the trip and attend the shows with an open mind prepared for nothing but a good time. I found out that the Dead let people tape all their live shows anyway so no-one can predict or know exactly what they will do each time they get together and play. Spontaneity, I dig it, I’m all over it. It’s even cool that I don’t own any of their music. Apparently anybody who is a true fan doesn’t pay much attention to the studio albums that the Grateful Dead put out anyway, John #2 said, “the early ones are ok and the rest are shit.” I don’t know, I always thought “Trucking” was kind of a cool song.

I talked to Jenifer and she’s still going with Kristoff and some other girl whose name is Deanna. They are driving in a dookie-brown-colored mini pickup truck so I don’t envy their travel arrangements. Sitting on somebody’s lap is fun for about an hour at the most and can make for an awfully long journey. We’ve talked a lot about how she feels for me lately so I’m lot more at ease about her going with him. Lord help me, I love this girl so much that I don’t want to be apart from her even for a day, but I think a little mini-vacation will do us both some good. Merely a short breath between passionate kisses I’m hoping. Enough about Jen though.

I’ve saved about 300 bones, 100 of which I’ve budgeted for a sheet of acid. Another hundred is to buy tickets (I don’t have ANY) to the shows, so I don’t waste my whole vacation sitting out in the parking lot toking up and listening to wisps of far off music that float outside. John Browning has an extra ticket to every show, so I feel confident we’ll be able to work something out. My last hundred bucks is allotted for gas money, food and any miscellaneous items I just have to have. There is a mini-loft in the back of John’s van with a futon mattress on top of it so that two people can sleep or lie down while two people sit up front and drive. Underneath the loft is where we’ll stash our gear and John scored a lot of wholesale muffins, pastries and granola-type things to snack on from the Kafe. He knows there are going to be some severe munchie sessions.

Minimalism is definitely going to be the way to go. I’m bringing my French Army pack from school. It should be big enough for a few weeks. Anything that won’t fit in there, I probably won’t need anyway, so fuck it. I’m also bringing my skateboard for good luck, plus if we run out of gas it might just come in handy. I can just skate down the shoulder of the freeway and get gas or something. Plus, you never know where you will find a perfectly awesome raging place to skate in the wilds of America. You never really know with the way things are raging in Cali right now.

Jenifer left two days ago. We finally left yesterday and had to smoke many bowls almost immediately to christen the van with positive energy. I’m very high. We all seem to have massive amounts of marijuana with us, each person packing for four or more. I’m ashamed to say that my pot, which is pretty good stuff, seems to be the lowest quality weed in the car. John Spiece (found out his last name finally, rhymes with crease) brought nothing but hydroponic kind bud with him. It’s taken my body about a day to happily adjust to the quality.

Fortunately with the enthusiasm of travel still being fresh I haven’t had to drive much yet.

We had an uneventful first day due to merely heading North through dreary old Texas. I imagine that seeing a van full of long haired hippy freaks sent a few rednecks running for their gun racks, but despite a few second glances we haven’t had any trouble. I’ve recognized some of the same washed up dust-covered cities from travels to Colorado with the Patterson family in my youth.

We finally camped about 2AM in Colorado last night. At a turn off down some deserted road out in the middle of nowhere. I could feel the presence of the mountains, with their comforting earthen rocky feel all around me despite the darkness. The moon was so bright and my eyes were so bloodshot that I was thankful to stop rolling down the road for a bit. It was so fucking cold. If I hadn’t brought my mummy bag I would have frozen to death by the side of the van. Despite the sub-zero temp, nobody really wanted to sleep inside the van, although this morning when I woke up John Browning and Viking Mike were in there snoring.

The stars are just so incredibly bright up here. I lay on my bed of gravel and pine needles last night, staring up into the sea of stars. They really do twinkle and shine. Bright pinpricks and bullet holes of pure light that hover merely a few inches from my face. This may sound pathetic, but as I gazed I couldn’t help but wonder where Jenifer was on her journey. I fell asleep thinking maybe she was looking up at the same stars thinking of me. I am a moony bastard sometimes.

I’m glad I remembered to bring my camera along. I got a picture of me skating on this weird shaped thing outside a rest area today. More of the same driving today but the scenery is incredible, maybe just because it’s different. We are taking pot smoking to a whole new level and I am definitely enjoying this meandering trek we are taking towards Yellowstone National Park. All my wanderings have yet to take me this far into the Northwest. Having a great [sic] time. I brought along my copy of Kerouac to read, but smoking a fat bowl once, sometimes twice, an hour all day has kept me too stoned to read. I’m definitely not complaining. Instead of tuning out the monotonous journey by dulling my brain with the mind numbing solace of a good book, I am riding along quite contently thanks to herbal medicine.

I’m also getting exposed to lots of excellent music. As I predicted, my travel mates overstocked on the mellow guitar music so they were surprised when I showed them all I brought was hip-hop and Police albums, (well CD’s and tapes anyway, bring back the vinyl love man!) but it’s proving to have been a good choice. I get giggly when I think about the image of us as four hippies driving across the country jamming Dr. Dre’s new CD. So far, we seem to alternate between “The Chronic” and The Grateful Dead most of the time.