100 Days 48 States - The Journey

"This is my quest: to follow that star,
no matter how hopeless, no matter how far..."
- Don Quixote from "Man of La Mancha"

TODAY’S ROUTE:
Twin Falls, ID to Ketchum, ID: US-30 West through Buhl to Hagerman to Bliss, East on US-26 through Shoshone to Carey to US-20 East to Craters of the Moon NM, back West on US-20 to SR-75 North through Hailey to Ketchum. (MAP)

THE DETAILS:
Seventeen years ago today I had the worst day of my life. My father died on September 27^th, 1982, after battling a brain tumor for over a year. I’m thinking about him today, and I’m also thinking about one of the reasons I’m making this journey: The Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. If you’ve sent in your donation to Cedars-Sinai, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t, what the hell are you waiting for? And if you don’t know what I’m talking about because your friend has been forwarding you these journals, send me an e-mail to 100days@danielcohen.org with your mailing address. I’ll put you on this distribution list, saving your friend the trouble, and I’ll also send you a postage paid mailer in which you’ll send Cedars a big fat check. Consider it a tax deductible subscription fee.

At dawn this morning it’s 30 degrees outside. There is no need to rush out, and I don’t need to freeze my ass off, so I wait a few hours. I realize that the visitor center for The Hagerman Fossil Bed National Monument is closed today. Damn. I though it was going be Sunday today, but it’s Monday. How the hell did that happen? They’re only open Thursday through Sunday and I won’t be able to get the stamp.

I call the number listed in the Fodor’s book and Tina, one of the park rangers, answers the line. I tell her I’m from New York, trying to get the stamp, wondering if anyone will be around the VC, you know the deal. She says they’re moving a bunch of fossils around and they’ll be gone for the day. But if I stop by late in the afternoon there might be someone there. And I could always send them a postcard they would be happy to stamp and send back to me. Thanks Tina, but that’s not what I had in mind. I can’t wait around all day because I’ve got to start getting north, so I head down the road 30 miles over to Hagerman. Worst case scenario, I’ll take a picture of the motorcycle in front of the park sign, as the Iron Butt will accept this.

When I get there, sure enough, they’re closed like a bank on Sunday. Big CLOSED sign in the window. I look in but there’s no one around. I notice a bunch of trucks parked out back, so I walk around the building and notice the rear door seems slightly ajar. It’s open, in fact.

"Hello. Is anyone here?"

No answer. I take a step in.

"HELLO. ANYONE HOME?"

I pass an open office, and suddenly I’m in the main room of the center. And there’s the stamp. Well, I guess they wouldn’t mind, right? I sign the guest book, thanking Tina, and go out the way I came in.

Was this breaking and entering? No, not really. I didn’t break anything.

Is this considered trespassing? Well, maybe? But I pay my taxes.

Did I get the stamp? YOU BET YOUR ASS I DID!

I stop for lunch at the Manhattan Cafe in Shoshone. Stamp hunting like this can work up an appetite. As soon as I get off the bike, two old timers are checking out the motorcycle and chatting it up with me. Waldo Faught, a WWII Veteran, witnessed the Bikini Atoll Atomic Bomb tests. He’s still here to tell you about it, even though the hull of his ship was so hot the Geiger counter went right off the scale. He blesses God and Idaho for his good health. Bob, the other fellow, owned a BMW motorcycle dealership in Twin Falls years ago. He also sold Triumphs and has about 50 of them in storage. He rides a big touring Venture, with a radio and even cruise control. Says there’s nothing like a motorcycle to bring people together. Right on there BOB!

Next stop is Craters of the Moon National Monument. The place lives up to its name, a huge lava field 83 square miles across. There’s no volcano, as the Earth just opened up and the lava spewed out. Fissure vents, volcanic cones, and lava flows began erupting here about 15,000 years ago and they ceased only 2,000 years ago. Scientists say the hot magma will flow here again within the next thousand years. In the meantime you can drive the park loop road and hike about the strange lava formations. If you come here, hopefully it won’t be snowing when you arrive, as it was for me. It’s probably about forty degrees, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have snow.

The flurries let up as I head towards Ketcham and Sun Valley, the final resting place for the old man, Ernest Hemingway. 65 dollars get me a great spread with a killer view of the mountain and a fireplace. I bet this room goes for 300 bucks during Christmas week. A filling dinner at Desperado’s Mexican Restaurant, and I’m ready for a quiet evening by my fake fire. Hey, it may just be propane and some ceramic logs, but it still has that certain charm.

Happy birthday to Jena Allee who is carrying a little extra weight these days. She and John are expecting their first child in about three weeks, and they still haven’t decided on a name. I’m still leaning on the name of that little town I went though in Utah. What was it called again? We’ll keep you posted.

THE DAILY TAKE:
Miles Today: 220.8
Total Miles: 13,054
Time on Motorcycle: 4 Hours 12 Minutes
Average Speed: 52.6 MPH
States Visited today: 1 (ID)
Total States Visited: 29
National Park Service Passport Stamps: 2
NPS Stamp totals: 96 Stamps, 26 States
Weather: Cold & Clear, then Colder with Snow Flurries
Number of different animal species found at Hagerman Fossil Beds: 180

SEEN ON THE ROAD:
"We Need To Talk – God" - sign outside a church on US-30 near Buhl, ID.

RANDOM PASSINGS:
Just because I haven’t mentioned any problems with my AT&T cell phone doesn’t mean they’ve gone away. Quite the contrary actually. AT&T (from here on referred to as the Nazis) continues to live up to their reputation as the worst company I have ever dealt with.

When I got to Twin Falls last night I turned on my phone, as I do at the end of every day. The phone displayed a full strength signal. Great, I though, as I pressed the speed dial for my mother’s home phone. (I call her every night to let her know I’m still alive.) The phone beeped the familiar tone, and then my problems begin.

"Welcome to the American Roaming Network. The phone you are using is not registered in the area you are calling from. You may place a call using a credit card or calling collect by pressing the one key now."

I’ve heard this story before. The same thing happened to me in Alden, Michigan, Bismark, North Dakota, and Steamboat Springs, Colorado. And each time I’ve had lengthy phone conversations with the Nazi Customer Support Team. They’ve wasted hours of my time. Each time, the service reps (from here on referred to as the SS) tell me a different story and refuse to transfer me to their supervisors. The last SS member I spoke to from Steamboat, Kevin Carpenter at the Paramus call center, promised me that a supervisor would call me back within 24 hours. I never heard a word from anyone. I’ve been lied to, I’ve been cheated, and I’ve been abused.

I’m definitely not getting what I paid for. The Nazis, with their One Rate Plan, promise to provide phone service to their customers (i.e. me) wherever there is a cellular signal. Where they don’t have their own cells, they advertise that they have carriage agreements in almost every location where there is a cell tower. This may be true, but it doesn’t do me any good when my phone is not registering properly on the network and then the SS lies to me about it.

So here in Twin Falls, I decide to give it one more try. Hey, it makes good copy, and I figure I’m building one hell of a class action lawsuit. I pick up the motel land line and dial the 800 number for the SS office on the East Coast. I’ve learned that it you just dial the main service number they have to transfer you to your home area anyway and waste five more minutes of your time.

After five minutes on hold, Margaret Kinney picks up my call. I ask her to look up my call history so I don’t have to explain everything again, although I do anyway. She puts me on hold for five minutes. When she comes back she tells me that the problem was resolved that last time. I tell her that is a lie and that the problem was not taken care of. NO ONE EVER CALLED ME BACK. She gives me a bullshit, unintelligible explanation as to why my calls are not going through. I tell Margaret to stop lying to me. There is no way she could even know why my phone isn’t working because she hasn’t even checked it out yet. She hasn’t even asked me for the local area code! I tell her that my calls are being picked up by Comnet Cellular (you can find this out by dialing 611 + send on your phone) and I want to know if AT&T has a carriage agreement with them. She puts me on hold for another five minutes. When she comes back she tells me that they don't have a deal with Comnet Cellular and that I should be picked up by Cellular One. She says that Comnet is the "enemy". She puts me on hold again to check if I am registered on the Cellular One network. When she comes back five minutes later, she says I should be able to make a call, but I’ll have to move locations because the other signal is too strong. I demand to talk to a supervisor. I'm put on hold again.

About 15 minutes go by and I decide to call Comnet Cellular on my cell phone and see what they can do for me. A lovely woman named Laurel from Comnet tries to help me out. She confirms that they do indeed have a carriage agreement with AT&T in the Twin Falls area. She asks if she can call me back on the landline as she would like to try calling the cell phone. The Nazis still have me on hold, and I doubt they’ll ever pick up, so I hang up and Laurel calls me back right away.

She tries the cell but nothing happens. She figures out that my phone isn’t properly registered on their network and she’ll need to call the Nazis to get some help. She puts me on hold, but comes back a minute later to tell me that the Nazis aren’t answering their calls. She’s sorry but she won’t be able to do anything else until tomorrow morning when she’ll call them back.

I can’t believe this. This Angel is going out of her way to help me and I’m not even her customer. When I wake up in the morning, MY PHONE IS WORKING. THANK YOU LAUREL!

Meanwhile, the Nazis haven’t done anything for me. They could care less if I was lying in a ditch on the side of the road. And if I tried to make a call to get some help, my phone wouldn’t work anyway. And that 7 cents a minute line they’re giving you on their television commercials is a complete load of crap. It’s only for new customers! Next thing you know, they’ll be telling you to go take a shower – right before they turn on the gas.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. STAY AWAY FROM AT&T.