The million dollar shithouse
Week 62 - a mix of disorientating experiences and extreme weather does nothing to help Ellie and Mark find their groove as they cross the border from Montana into North Dakota.
“That is the first time I’ve ever seen a hotel manager’s arse before checking in somewhere,” Ellie said, a little shell-shocked.
“It was very broad and pink,” she added, “a lot like a large sow.”
The small and unkempt reception area of The Arrowhead Motel in New Salem stank of stale cigarettes and neglected dogs. The two dogs in question barked up a storm as we knocked on doors and called out for someone to talk to.
We eventually went around the back of the hotel. It resembled a junkyard. There, leaning over with his head stuck into the passenger window of a parked car was Pete, the hotel manager. His pants were slung down around his thighs, and his pink, voluminous arse gleamed brightly in the sharp Dakotan sunlight. It was blinding.
Ellie thought that he must have been masturbating while looking at something in the car. “Prairie dogging,” as it were. I approached cautiously, shouting out, close enough to see that he was only having a chat with the lad in the car. Thankfully, there was no prairie dogging afoot. Pete’s slacks were just incredibly slack.
Pete’s lack of bashfulness in relation to letting his whole arse hang out was reflected in his overall appearance. Imagine Beetlejuice with a few days’ worth of dinner staining his shirt, some prison tattoos, and you’re close.
He too smelled of stale cigarettes and neglected hounds. I began to think that maybe the poor dogs actually smelled of neglected Pete.
The Arrowhead Motel cost $47 a night, making it a a rare entity: a hotel in America that is just about within our price range. There was nowhere to camp in New Salem. We held our breath, ignored our reservations, and checked in.
“They’ve tried to fire me like four times,” Pete told me as I scrawled my name on the dotted line, “but I keep the place running.”
Indeed he does. “No Refunds, no matter what” the sign at the reception desk read. I tried to imagine the other folk who turned up for the job interview for hotel manager that Pete apparently aced.
The original lock on our room looked like it had been kicked in, but it had at least been replaced. The gentlemen in the room next door, along with their associate who remained in the vehicle outside, were operating what appeared to be a pop-up pharmaceutical business.
We rolled our sleeping bags out over the stained bed linen, wedged the bicycles against the door, placed our bear spray on the bedside lockers, and lay down.
“F@€kin’ Yes Boy!” I roared at the top of my lungs, whooping and hollering for all I was worth. We were watching Waterford versus Tipperary in the Munster Hurling Championship on a tiny screen where we lay.
When Kevin Mahony snatched a goal in injury time for Waterford to steal a draw, I may have inadvertently spooked the drug dealers next door.
Time for some weirdness
Once again this week we met some wonderfully generous and hospitable people on the road. I’ll get to them eventually, but first I want to recount some of the weirdness of our travels in America.
It’s taken us a long time to find a rhythm to our journey here, much longer than it’s taken us to find a similar rhythm in other places. Being able to orientate ourselves is kinda important when you’re travelling around the world on a bicycle. Some of the unexpected weirdness we’re encountering in the United States is extremely disorientating.
In places like China and Japan we expected the unusual and strange because those cultures are so far removed from our own.
Western society is so heavily influenced by America that the majority of life here looks and feels familiar, but then something will be so completely bizarre that it turns our world upside down. The Fossil and Dinosaur Museum in Glendive, Montana is a prime example.
Of all the complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons that have ever been unearthed, more than half of them have been found in this part of the world. Dinosaurs and fossils are part of life here. We were advised by Nelly, one of our WarmShowers hosts, that we absolutely had to visit the Fossil and Dinosaur Museum in Glendive. Herself and her kids laughed as they recommended it.
What makes this museum unique in the world of palaeontology is that it is founded, funded, and run by creationists.
Creationists believe that a single divine creator populated the entire planet as is, and evolution did not happen. Monkeys are not our cousins, and the universe, the whole shooting match, was created in six days somewhere between six and ten thousand years ago. Most astrophysicists and cosmologists believe the universe to be around 13 billion years old. A slight discrepancy there.
Visiting a dinosaur and fossil museum run by creationists is like being led on a cycling expedition around the world by a vegan flat earther who owns and runs a particularly good steakhouse. Befuddling contradictions are inevitable.
A museum like no other
We were given a primer by the gentleman at reception before we entered the museum. “Unlike other museums, this one is dedicated to the glory of God the Creator.” we were told. We thought we were ready. We were not.
Each exhibit comes with small print, terms and conditions, qualifying its existence to fit the creationist view of planet history. It was mind-boggling. The explanation for the speedy creation of oil and coal was difficult to swallow, but it was nothing compared to the diorama of Noah’s Ark.
Did Noah bring dinosaurs on the ark? Yes. How did he feed all those animals? The information on the plaque at the diorama suggests that most of the animals, possibly even all, entered a state of hibernation-like stasis, reducing the feed and poop situation to “virtually nil.”
Would the lions and t-rexes eat the other animals? Not at all! The curators of the museum say that only after the ark landed did god give humans and animals permission to be carnivores. The menu on the ark, for anyone who wasn’t asleep, was completely vegetarian.
“For some reason I’m incredibly thirsty,” Ellie told me in a bemused state as we made our way around the museum. “I’ve got a really bad headache,” I responded. A discombobulating journey through space and time will do strange things to a person.
Step away from the potatoes
“A potato suppository is a wonderful cure for haemorrhoids and piles,” the 73-year-old lady with an unusual shade of red hair told me. “You’d be amazed what it can draw out.”
“Annette, I’m amazed that anyone would stick a potato up their arse,” I said, actually slapping my thighs and hooting with laughter.
“I’m more fond of spuds than most, Annette, but that might be taking things a little too far.” I was enjoying the very strange turn this conversation had taken. Ellie poked her head out from the bathroom door, with a look of shocked amusement. Neither of us had ever considered this particular type of potato wedge before.
Further along our journey, in another small prairie town, we had pitched our tent next to the building where Annette had her holistic healing and massage therapy studio. The campsite and Annette’s studio shared a common room. She was there to replenish her stock of ear candles and, apparently, extol the virtues of Kerr Pink buttplugs.
Maybe in Japan or China somebody had suggested that inserting a vegetable in your rectum may alleviate some condition or other, but the language barrier meant we couldn’t understand. I’m willing to bet that it’s more likely that some of the stuff we’re experiencing in America is just more bizarre and extreme than anything we’ve encountered anywhere else in the world, language barrier be damned.
“I haven’t talked to my sister since the last election. She’s got Donald Trump mania.” Annette told us sadly, staring forlornly at the bundle of ear candles in her hand. We’re becoming adept at navigating these kinds of conversations. “Is her mania pro- or anti-Trump?” Ellie asked.
“Oh, she hates him!”
Antisocial multimedia posts
“In God we trust” read a huge billboard that had been erected on the hillside of a ranch at the edge of Cat Creek oil field. As we cycled nearer the sign we could read the fine print. In smaller text, between the “God” and the “we” were the words “and Donald J Trump.” Where exactly the owners of this ranch stood on Noah’s vegan tyrannosaurs wasn’t stated.
“Eat steak. Wear fur. Keep your guns. Salute the flag,” another billboard at the edge of a small town read. The shoutiness of billboards in beautiful and serene places does nothing to help with our orientation. It feels like people printing out gigantic social media posts to place on billboards in the prairie.
One of the really enjoyable things about cycling a bike in the fresh air in most places is escaping that constant online barrage of what is inside people’s heads. Seeing outrage politics converted from digital to large-scale analog is unsettling.
“Come and take them,” read a flag with an image of a semi-automatic rifle on it, that was being flown outside someone’s house. The array of antisocial multimedia posts we have encountered often feel more antagonistic than supportive. They’re doing nothing to help alleviate our disorientation.
As we made our way from Montana into North Dakota, we had some bipolar weather added into the disorientating mix. We cycled towards the tiny town of Sand Springs in 30 degree heat. Two days later, in the town of Circle, we needed to take a snow day. 80 kilometre an hour gusts and sub-zero temperatures prompted a blizzard warning.
We saw on the news that hailstones the size of golf balls were falling in Kansas. We’re headed in that direction. “Yup. If one of them hailstones hits ya, it could kill ya,” a Kansas native we met on the road informed us later. Maybe that’s what took the dinosaurs out a few thousand years ago?
You’re not as important as you think you are
For all the bizarre encounters, pontificating and weirdness, the reward for cycling in this part of the world can be found away from people, out on the prairies. When the wind is on your side, there’s a peace and serenity here that will soothe the most chaotic soul.
Cycling between buttes and pillars of ancient rock, it’s possible to reach out and touch layers of time. You can see lines of stone that delineate a history that is difficult comprehend. It’s mind blowing to realise that the badlands we were cycling through in both Montana and North Dakota, used to be seabed 80 million years ago. Fossils and shells litter the land.
The soil and stone has been there for millennia before we came along, and for all our shouting and running around the place, our theories and self importance, the land and stone will still be there long after we are gone.
There is something calming and reassuring in how insignificant this landscape makes humanity feel. “Ssssssh,” the land says, “calm yourself. You’re not as important as you think you are.”
We’d heard variations a quote about the soulfulness of the prairies as we made our way through east Montana, but this version attributed to Louis Toothman in 1961 is the one that stayed with me as we cycled through the terrain that inspired it. Unfortunately, I’ve no clue who Louis Toothman is.
“To love and appreciate the Rocky Mountains, you only open your eyes, but to love and appreciate the prairie, you must open your soul.” - Louis Toothman 1961
Salt of the earth
We arrived in the tiny prairie town of Sand Springs dusty and sweaty. Stephanie was running the family general store where we got some cold drinks and hot food. We were hoping to pitch our tent behind the store, but Stephanie and her mother Wanda invited us stay for free in the huge RV (campervan to us Irish folk) that was parked beside the premises.
It was a real treat to sleep in one of the highway behemoths that had been passing us along the road. We’ve been camping a lot on this leg of our journey, so a bed and wash after a dusty and windy day on the plains was welcome.
The night before, we camped in the town park in Winnett, and made use of the public showers and toilets they’ve built in the town for travellers like us. Townsfolk welcomed us, people came up for a chat, and we were made feel very welcome and safe in the small community.
A lady called Squirrel befriended us and became our camp host. “On one side of my family I’m related to Billy the Kid, and on the other side of the family we’re descended from Geronimo,” Squirrel told us. “Did you know that Billy The Kid was a McCarthy?” Squirrel asked. “I’m part Irish!”
We did not know that William H Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was in fact christened Henry McCarty. William H Bonney was one of his many aliases. Squirrel, in line with her wild lineage, was quite the character. Salt of the earth folk are a common feature on the prairies.
There aren’t a lot of towns out on the prairie, but in the middle of nowhere, the Montanan road authority have built an extremely well-appointed public convenience. We’d been told to look out for this highfalutin jaxx to use as a geographical guide. “The million dollar shithouse” is how the colourful clientele of the Farmers’ Bar in Denton had referred to it. We were highly amused by the recommendation, and we were reliably informed we couldn’t miss it.
In a landscape bereft of prominent features, the million dollar shithouse is a stand-out landmark. We were far happier than we should have been to reach it. It is just as fancy as the folk in the Farmers’ Bar had said it would be. Added to the overall ambience, as you sit in a cubicle, there’s a live audio feed weather report for the area. It’s not a Japanese level jaxx, but it’s not far off.
A fancy shithouse was one of the things that would actually help orientate us this week. That’s how we roll, I suppose. The rhythm of the road here is erratic, but we are finding it. Giving us a hand with that are the people we’re talking to, and especially those who are going out of their way to help us.
Warm welcomes
In Great Falls, John welcomed us into his home with an incredible barbecued dinner and some wonderful advice for the road ahead.
We got to stay in a log cabin mansion on the banks of the Missouri River in Glendive with Joyleen and Glen. Joyleen knew the way to my heart was spuds; these particular ones were accompanying a delicious stew. Thankfully, we hadn’t met Annette at this point, so we could focus on eating the potatoes.
Nelly, Mattie and Mallory put us up for the night in the town of Circle, even though they were just returning home from their own trip, and their basement had flooded. Nelly serenaded us with a song on the piano before we went to bed. “She always plays that one,” Mallory told us. Kids, the world over, are well practiced at keeping parents grounded.
When we cycled into the small town of Richardton, North Dakota, we were surprised to see a huge monastery that’s home to a community of Benedictine monks. Joel and his family cycled out to meet us as we passed it. When we entered their house, after a cold day on the road, we were welcomed by the warm aroma of baking bread.
Sasha is originally from Ukraine, and she has managed to infuse her home with the cosiness of an Eastern European cabin in the woods. Masha and Anna, the children of the family, peppered us with insightful questions, and they also answered some of ours. They are a wonderfully warm and engaging family, the epitome of WarmShowers hospitality and community.
Once again, we are indebted to the WarmShowers folks who have gone above and beyond the level of hospitality that disorientated and disheveled wanderers like ourselves deserve. If there’s anything keeping us from spiralling into a vortex of befuddlement, it’s these people who welcome us into their homes like long lost friends.
After an incredibly colourful and eventful week on the road, one that went from extremes of strangeness to extremes of kindness, it’s sad to realise that the one thing from it that will forever be indelibly imprinted on our memory is the vision of Pete’s arse glistening in the sunshine.
Thank god he didn’t have any spuds in it.
Hold her steady and keep it between the ditches!
45 years ago cycling from East to West across America, I remember writing about the Amish woman, Sylvia Zook who took me & my friend in during a thunderstorm and saying…”We will always remember Sylvia was the gatekeeper of our journey. She taught us there are no average Americans out there. Everyone had a twist of eccentricity in their character.”
The Eccentricity of the average rural Americans sounds even increasingly ECCENTRIC!
Oh man, I can't unread the potato thing! LOL
North Dakota is right below Manitoba where I grew up. I might even have been in Winnett at one time or another with the 'rents during a summer camping trip. We've been through the Badlands too.