i love this picture. it capture all of the sweetness of linda. she did me a big favor this weekend by joining me up at Sattley right before her bidness trip down to Fresno today. she didn't want to go, told me she didn't want to go but I kept trying to register late. finally, she helped me by looking up the right number. i'm so pig headed.

she hates time-trials more than i hate them and i hate them a lot. so it was a stressful trip and really no fun at all. it didn't help that we stayed in the Great Western Saloon in Loyalton about 12 miles from the course. what a stinkhole of a place, tho the people were friendly enough. we ordered two margaritas as soon as we checked in. "do you do top shelf?" linda asked the guy behind the bar who looked like he was the owner "with a splash of Cointreau," she explained. "kwan-what?" he asked. as he poured in some coolant colored mix he felt the bottle with his palm " kinda warm" he said. couldn't wait.

the restaurant had a brownish greyish moldish colored shag carpet covering the floor and a stone fountain that looked like it had been plopped there because whoever was carrying it outside (where it belonged) ran out of energy. no water flowed in it. it just was there, in the middle of the dining floor. perhaps a previous owner's good idea gone bad and forgotten.


we ordered two beers because we weren't feeling anything from the warm margarita engine coolant.

"this place is depressing," linda said.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I wanted to say. tho it's usually no good to say sorry once you're already in purgatory. best to wait until things look up a little. but with a 40k tt the next morning and then a 4 hour drive home before her 4 hour trip to fresNO, there wasn't much looking up on the horizon.

I'd chosen my seat so as not to face the restaurant's far wall/shed area -- the final resting place of empty boxes, aerosal cleaning cans, dusty plastic flowers and a boom box from circa 1973. instead, i stared at the poster on the far right wall. a picture of a hunk of chocolate cake and a can of diet coke. "Eat American" it said.

"remember that poster from last time we were here?" i asked linda who looked small and forlorn sitting across from me. she glanced over her shoulder. "maybe," she said and then, "we're never staying here again."

the menu was a binder of odd pictures of food clipped from magazines like some seventh grade art project. and if any crime had been committed by a customer at the Great Western Saloon in the past twenty years, i would direct detectives to this thing. no need to dust for prints, i turned each page with the tips of my fingers.

"Best dang food you ever had" read a caption beneath a picture of spaghetti. who'd ever clipped the picture must have been in a rush because they'd chopped right through the top of the meatball.

"is the spaghetti sauce homemade?" linda asked the waitress.
"no it's Prego," she said.

later, in our room, i tried not to let anything i'd brought touch anything. i would have put kleenex boxes on my feet and rubber gloves on my hands if i had them. i noticed linda had put a plastic bag under her toiletry bag on the sink counter. and i'm 100% certain there was semen on that bedspread cover, no fibre analysis required. the blinds wouldn't open, the window wouldn't open. it was like we were in an acquarium floating in shag carpet fumes. linda took a shower and went to sleep immediately.

i turned off the lights and turned on the TV, strapped to the ceiling. and we still had a 40k TT to do.