5:35 am: Not aching or groaning or crying, but definitely unhappy. My cheeks also, partly because the seats are made of confetti’ed cardboard. (Bus seats are much softer and more ass-friendly in Europe.) Thank God for the stretching-and-bathroom stops.
A half-hour ago we were at a rest stop in Great Bend, Pennsylvania, home of two retail stores that are very much part of our current national moment — Pennsylvania Guns & Ammo and Stateline Bullets.
I was standing in a parking lot and thinking about being shot to death by an enraged 19 year old, and I suddenly felt spelled by spooky little white cloud formations in the nearby woods. The smell of grass, trees and asphalt coated with pre-dawn moisture…upvote that.
