W I L D   W E S T   R O D E O

Monday, August 16, 2004

Engine noise from outside the van pulls me from my slumber around 8am in the morning. I peek outside only to find one of Cody's finest (a police officer) stepping out of his patrol car. For cripes sakes, I haven't been parked for more than 6 hours and they're already breathing down my neck. It's hard to be nice when you feel like you're being unnecessarily harassed.

I watch him walk past the van and into the adjacent house situated on a corner lot. Earlier in the morning when I arrived, I took care not to park directly in front of the property. But that doesn't seem to matter. He goes inside for about 15 minutes. He then leaves the house, gets into his car, and drives away.

My guess is the homeowner saw the van and thought I was a terrorist. Yes, a terrorist who was inside the van feverishly wiring up a bomb to specifically blow them up. So they called the police. The officer assessed the situation, ran my Oregon plates, then told the homeowner I was just some Joe on vacation, simply passing through. I think it's nice the officer decided not to bother me.

But then again maybe he was just visiting his mother?

Needless to say (that's a funny term because I'm going to say it anyway), I leave the place pretty quick in search of more public surroundings. Via my GPS I discovered Cody has a reservoir and it looks like there's a public park there. I drive there and yes, I'm right, there's a really nice park. My intention is to park the van and get more sleep since I only got 5 hours in before the police incident earlier.

I only manage to catch 2 more hours of sleep but still felt rather wiped out. I end up just relaxing and writing postcards. I have plans to go see the rodeo in the evening and all I really need to do prior is get gas, refill the van's water bottles, buy a rodeo ticket, and go food shopping.

While sitting at a picnic table writing my postcards, I take a good, hard look at my van and realize it is absolutely filthy. Yesterday's drive through Grand Teton National Park really made a mess of it. The park is in the process of rebuilding one of its major thoroughfares and when passing through they had just sprayed the dirt roadway with water to keep the dust down. The road splashed up a good slurry of mud on each side of the van. So much so, I think, "Wouldn't it be a great idea to write my website URL on both sides of the van?"

So with finger in... hand, I pen out my URL. A little shameless self-promotion I must say.

Jumping to the future, as a side note, if you read the URL is says www.jeffsadventure.com. You might ask yourself why doesn't it say www.mybigadventure.com? Good question. After I completed the trip I decided to change the domain from jeffsadventure to mybigadventure to make it more generic. The reason being the website is actually a prototype for a business idea I have. I've never had the time to pursue it but I still would like to in the future. We shall see.