CONTINUED FROM POST BELOW

Early morning, mid-September, 1979. Adjusted the rearview mirror of my 1976 Datsun B-210 hatchback as I headed out. About a top third of the back window was not blocked by records, clothes and my TV. Plenty of room to see where I’ve been.

I was too young and stupid to be nervous. Hell, it was 1979 baby, the era of disco music, easy sex and plentiful drugs (the first of which accounted for roughly 80 percent of my record collection, now jammed into a plastic milk crate; the other two, not so much). Here I was, a young college graduate with a stunning resume. I was co-editor of my university newspaper; I worked for a summer in Pittsburg (Calif.) on the daily newspaper where among my duties I wrote “Spotlight on Business,” a weekly feature on deserving local businesses (rotated among advertisers, and I dreaded when Vic’s One-Hour Martinizing came up); and I had the enthusiasm of youth going for me.

It wasn’t, “Please hire me, I’ll do anything.” It was, “Yeah, my background it that impressive; sure, I’ll wait.”

Until I was about 50 miles from home. Then it was, “What the hell am I doing?” There was a sudden aching in my hands until I realized I’d had the steering wheel in a death grip for the last 10 miles or so. My gut churned and suddenly those homemade chocolate chip cookies that I figured would sustain me to Utah suddenly did not look so good.

I could turn back. Easy. Every mile there was another exit. An easy merge to the right. Stop, turn left, head along the overpass. Another left. Go west, young man. Back home.

But then I was in Sacramento. Through the Sierra Nevadas, which offered a taste of Rocky Mountain High. This was not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. Think, in days I will have landed my dream job in Colorado, skiing on the weekends and living the kind of life other 21-year-old Americans could only dream.

This was like a trip to the Bipolar Circle.

Just inside Utah, the clouds let loose and visibility dropped to just about my front bumper. But suddenly, as if stepping into another room from behind a curtain, it was clear and crisp, the sun dipping below the horizon behind me. And just ahead, like an arch to a better future (the emotional rollercoaster was on a euphoric peak), was a rainbow. Not a halfassed rainbow that might waver for a few seconds in one corner of sky, but a full-fledged, ground to ground, Technicolor right-outta-Disney rainbow that even Leprechauns Local 501 of the Pot-o-Gold Hiding Union would’ve respected.

I pulled off to admire it. Mostly to stare for a while, and also to let the blood flow back to my ass (I haven’t had tingles back there like that before or since). I’d covered roughly 800 miles in 11 hours without a bathroom break. So I stepped off the pavement and took care of that too.

Outside of Salt Lake City, at an hour I believe to be in the ungodly range (2, maybe 3 a.m.), I pulled into a rest stop, feeling the rollercoaster of emotion flying past the station and plummeting to depths unknown when I leaned my seat back only to have it wedge against the TV just a few degrees past 90.

It was cold, the car was low on gas, and I was trying to sleep in a position meant to discourage rest. I even cursed the TV (the first and last time for that as well).

Then, about two hours later, I had a visitor. I awoke to a tap on the driver's-side window. First thought – who the hell comes calling in the middle of the night, particularly at a Utah rest stop.

Second thought – this is not good.

There was a shadow at the window, hard to make out due to lack of illuminations and the light coating of frost on the window. I rolled down the window to reveal what, based on his Smokey the Bear bat, was a Utah state trooper.

“You can't sleep here,” he said.

I could if you weren't banging on my window. No, I didn't say that. Didn't say a thing. Brain wasn't quite engaged.

“State law prohibits overnight stays at rest stops. Can I see some identification please?”

Welcome to Utah.

He returned with my license about 10 minutes later, suggesting if I were too tired to drive I could stay at some motel about five miles up the road. As if I had never heard of a motel before.

This wasn't about comfort. This was about sacrifice, this was about suffering for my career.

But that can only go so far. It would be the last night I would spent at a rest stop. As I fired up the ignition and pulled out, I realized I had hit bottom. What the hell was I doing? Did I really think I could go all Jack Kerouac (in a capitalistic kind of way) and find something I really wanted to do?

But as the sun rose, so did my mood. Until I hit Grand Junction.

I knew by the map, and by the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign, that I was in my dream state. And it was flat and ugly and nothing more than a stripmall- and hotel-filled Bakersfield (I knew Bakersfield, and yes, Grand Junction was quite a Bakersfield)?

Where the hell was my goddamned Rocky Mountain High?

I had planned to apply at the Grand Junction paper, but decided against it the way the city totally fucked me. I could not imagine driving two days and hundreds of miles to work in Butthole, CO.

Man, I'd had better days. I pulled over in an Arby's parking lot (one of roughly 28 fast-food joints on the main drag, sandwiched around Motel 6, Sleep Inn, a handful of Best Westerns, and Motel 6 Eastside). I looked over the map, trying to determine where the Rocky Mountains started.

Tracing my finger northward, I hit Steamboat Springs. Ah, I remember Steamboat Springs. Ski area. Which meant snow. Which meant elevation.

Which meant mountains.

Soon, Grand Junction was in my rearview mirror. I did not wave goodbye (and to this day, I am happy to report, I have never been back to Grand Junction, and I firmly believe am a better man for it).

The highway rose steadily, and the naïve 21-year-old in me was expecting a rocky ridge to appear on the horizon, granite cliffs soaring thousands of feet skyward.

As I pulled into Steamboat, I realized this had to be the Rocky Mountains. There was a chill in the (rather thin) air, and I noticed chairlifts strong along various slopes. But this still was not the Colorado of my dreams. Where are the vertiginous peaks, the massive peaks, the thick pine forests? Steamboat Springs had a McDonald's, a Safeway, a Union 76, a drycleaner …

Rocky Mountain High, my ass.

I continued onward. I decided I would apply at Steamboat only if the town was incredible (since the newspaper was so small). Based on Steamboat's relative similarity to my dream of Steamboat, the newspaper would have had to been on the level of the Washington Post to interest me.

Yes, I was that stupid.

Thus for the next week, I crisscrossed the state, eventually finding the Colorado that lived in my imagination. Highlights included:

--A stunning a very scary drive over Independence Pass, a two-lane road that crept up the cliffs in a “pardon me, so sorry to intrude” sort of way. The road was timid, drivers were not. At one point an RV pointed downhill took up a full lane in what was roughly a 1 ½ -lane-wide road (and there certainly was no room for a guardrail despite the precipitous drop). I stopped, the RV stopped. The driver motioned me forward (I did not know at the time that uphill traffic has the right-of-way), so I crept around him. Just as I was about to clear him, there was roughly one inch between his bumper and mine, and less than that separating me from 1,000 feet of nothingness. John Denver never sang about this shit.

--The turning aspens ran like veins of gold through green valleys. I was dutifully impressed yet continued on without stopping to admire the scene, figuring hell, I was going to live here soon, I can see this stuff anytime. Only later would I discover this was “autumn” (I'm from California, who knew from autumn?) and it was a spectacle I would never experience the way I did then).

--Invigorating hotel stays. I was a Motel 6 convert. Sure, the TV only received three channels and if you wanted to “activate” the phone, it cost you more than $6, but so what? It was cheap, clean, warm and comfortable. And not once did a Utah State trooper knock on my door. Each morning I woke up with promise. The nights were not as hopeful, but it was a routine I accepted.

--Being pulled over for a ticket in Eagle, Colorado. Apparently was going 30 in a 25 mph zone. I was very mindful of lowered speed limits since small towns dotted the highway system, and I had seen radar-equipped patrolmen in many of them. The officer, noticing my out-of-state license and plates (no dummy he), said I would have to pay the ticket right then and there. Or I could hang around until the next day and appear before a judge to plead my case. I asked him how much I owed. “Ten dollars.” Wasn't this an episode in the Andy Griffith Show?

--Running into an editor who either was having a very bad day or was a professional asshole. After giving him my resume, he promptly tossed it in his waste can (“Oh, did you want that back?”) and strongly suggested that I “start at some smaller papers, you know, weeklies, because the market here is extremely competitive and no paper the size of ours is interested in someone just out of college.” This was at the Longmont Daily Call, circulation roughly 25,000 or so at the time. To that editor: Not only was my first job at a newspaper larger than yours, but I am, and have been, employed by a major metropolitan daily for nearly 25 years, so fuck you and your shitty suburban rag.

--Pulling into Boulder. Now this is what I was envisioning. Granite peaks bursting from the valley floor like stone sentinels, snow-covered peaks in the distance – all that poetic shit. Downtown was quaint, and with the University of Colorado right there, plenty to do and see. Unfortunately, every journalism major in Colorado felt the same way and my resume was among the hundreds editors received over a month. “And turnover is almost nonexistent, but good luck to you,” the editor said. “That's something driving around the state looking for a job. We have CU graduates send us resumes and they don't even bother to visit. You'll find something.”

I did. But it wasn't about what I had to offer.

Timing was everything.

TO BE CONTINUED