America by Night

America always sets my stomach churning. Not in revulsion, by any means, but through my fear of their xenophobia. What would that be? Autoxenophobia? Who cares.
Getting to the border at Emerson was easy enough--Canada is calm and friendly and familiar, at least in my mind.
But baseless fears and borders lead to acid reflux. As I passed into Pembina, North Dakota, the guards waved me into a tall rolling-doored garage, asked me a bunch of questions, and then threw me into a room with one-way mirrors, telling me to wait while they searched my very terrorist-looking 1971 Sportcraft trailer. Two minutes later, they come to ask me how to open the trailer, and throw me back into my fishbowl. Three minutes later, they come in, and I tell them that I'll close it for them so they don't break it. For once, their stone faces crack, and I see they're relieved they don't have to figure out how to do it (--don't ask me why--it's the same process as putting it up, only you turn the little black handle in the other direction).
Granite jowls and drooping drawers restored, they wave me through.
I'm unhappy. I can't explain it. I don't feel comfortable in the US. I know it's exactly the same landscape, and all the same plants, as I saw directly north of here, but if not for the cheap, cheap gas and hot, hot exchange rate, I'd be aimed for Thunder Bay and beyond, content in the fact that nobody had their eye on me. Paranoia.
So as night falls, I try to find maps for every state I think I'll be passing through at gas stations, hotels, and rest stops. I find a "North Dakota--Western South East Lower Lakes Area" tourist map and guide," but it describes only the 500 square feet of the rest stop, and mentions the gas station I'd already stopped at.
Finally, I just look at the bottom of my map of Manitoba, which goes all the way to Fargo, ND, and from there follow the Interstate to Minneapolis-St.Paul. (Sidenote: while there, I don't see any dodgy overpasses like the one on the W35 that collapsed yesterday--probably because it's dark. )
Oh--And I'd forgotten to mention that in Winnipeg, I'd looked online and found a ferry that crosses Lake Michigan about four hours north of Chicago. In theory, this shortcut would cut eight hours off my American odyssey. But it leaves Manitowoc, Wisconsin in 15 hours. If I don't catch that one, I have to wait an extra day, and, well, like I said, I don't want to be there that long.
So, replay everything I've said in your head, only consider that I have only 15 hours to get about 1,244 km, and reset your mindset appropriately.
Right. So, I'm barreling like a retard through the northern United States, asking stupid questions and looking for maps, and night falls. Fireworks are going off sporadically in random places off the highway, with it being July 2 and all. Americans and other drivers, seeing that I'm a tourist, pass me, assuming I'm going slow because I'm pulling a trailer. But I'm not! I'm averaging about 120km/hour, not counting the on- and off-ramps I take to search for maps. I bypass town after town on ring roads or circumferential highways or whatever other name they've given their land-raping strip of traffic-easing pavement and overpasses, when, in mid-Minnesota, fog like tar falls over the land. It becomes impossible to see 10 feet in front of the truck.
Do I slow down? Would you?
I suppose I do a little, but only because everyone else is in the way. I'm down to the dregs on the iPod, or at least to stuff I haven't listened to ever before, so Me First and the Gimme Gimmes--doing a ska cover of Sloop John B (and a million other ska covers of easy-listening songs from the '70s) guide me through the soup covering the highway. After playing chicken with a BMW for a while--he'd speed up, then I'd not change speed, and then he'd slow down, and then I'd go exactly the same speed, and then he'd give me the finger, and I'd just turn off the dash lights so it'd be harder for him to shoot me.
All the way into Wisconsin, the fog never let up. Myself, on the other hand, well, I was fading fast. After doing an illegal U-turn just past Menomonie, WI, after sleeping past an off-ramp, I got on track for Manitowoc, but realised that I wasn't really watching where I was going at all, and wasn't really interested in being awake. Unacceptable! I cranked the wheel, and roared on three wheels (two truck, one trailer) into the parking lot of a gas station in Weston, WI, and got a mouthful of the worst coffee I'd ever had, a gutful of the shittiest packaged sandwich I'd ever pushed past my gag-reflex, and enough gas to get to Manitowoc without stopping again.
Roaring back onto the highway, I look at the clock. I've got an three hours to
get 150 miles. That's easy, I think, until I convert it to kilometres and realize that's 240 km. Still possible. Pedal to floor, eyes set to full pay-attention mode, numb ass to shut-up-because-nobody-cares mode, I get back on the highway.
By now, the fog has lifted. The horizon brightens, and as the highway clears, I become zen. I can make it, I chant. From somewhere in the iPod's cavernous stores appears Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. I put it on repeat, and begin a nirvana-like trek into inner peace, knowing that at the correct speed, and with the right amount of robotic diligence, I can make it.
For no reason whatsoever, with the daylight comes God on a lightningbike, trying to flood the earth and kill me with lightning. Bolts fall around me as I'm driving up the highway. Some of them hit close enough to follow from sky to earth, with thunder loud enough to be heard inside the truck at 100 km/h.
Do I slow down?
Well, I can't really see, and the windshield wipers can't really keep up.
So I keep going 100 km/hour. I clench my buttocks to avoid fouling my pants during hydroplaning sessions, and with one eye on the road, and one on the clock, I barrel through Wisconsin. The music shifts again, and Steve Earle's instrumental "Dominick Street," a jaunty onomatopoetic distillation of a fun childhood day, clears the sky and dries the roads. I roll into Green Bay with an hour to spare, and with the song on repeat, I barrel through morning rush-hour traffic and get my first glimpse of Lake Michigan. It's big, it's blue, and it looks like a lake. But this lake only has one side. Cool.
Welcome to Manitowoc, says the sign. I've made it. I miss the exit. I take the next one. I turn the wrong way. I have 30 minutes. I squeal the tires. I back up in someone's driveway. I retrace my steps. I drive too fast through the sleepy old town, cursing the kids/Yankees/tourists who stole the sign that tells me where the stupid ferry terminal is. There it is. No. There? NO. Oh. There it is. 7:49. I have 11 minutes to catch the ferry. I walk up to the door. It's locked. I walk to the pay phone. It's locked. That's stupid. No, it's not locked. But there's no answer when I phone the information line posted outside the building. I look at the truck and trailer, marvelling that they're both still in one piece.
I stand there.
What the hell do I do now? Did I miss it? The parking lot is empty, and the buildings are all locked.
Some sort of police or security people drive into the ferry parking lot. I wave frantically at them. They wave back, smiling jerkily. As in like jerks.
I stand there.
It starts raining again.
In my mind, I take a cast-iron pipe, and begin smashing ...
No, no. I don't. I sit in the truck.
Shit.
I go to sleep almost instantly.
Four hours later, someone bangs on the window. "Do you have a reservation?" someone asks.
"Huh?" I ask deftly, wiping the drool away and noticing that I can't bend my neck.
"Come inside."
Inside, a pretty young redheaded teenager tells me there may not be room.
"Huh?" I ask, using everything I learned in journalism school.
"We'll try to fit you on, but you should have had a reservation," she says in an accent that's a little twangy, but nothing like the Fargo accent (people in Fargo don't have the Fargo accent, either, I should mention).
Something snaps.
"Why would I want a reservation for a ferry that's four hours late?" I ask, but in a voice that sounds far more resigned than angry, since I'm too tired to act anything other than tired.
Her turn. "Huh?" she asks, using all 11 years of school she's had since kindergarten.
"Why. Is. The. Ferry. Four. Hours. Late?" I chant, fairly curious.
"Sir," she twangs. "The ferry left Ludington, Michigan, at 8:04a.m. this morning, on schedule."
Red. Face. Bashful.
"8:04?"
"Yes."
"On time?"
"Yes."
"Ludington?"
"The ferry travels from Ludington to Manitowoc. It does so on the schedule posted. Today, it left..." blah blah blah, I was a retard, the schedule was online, I can't read.
So, anyway, three hours later, I watched as they drove my truck and trailer onto the SS Badger, the last coal-fired car-ferry in commercial service in North America. As the coal trucks filled the hoppers below the car deck of the ferry, I thought to myself, "well, at least I know I can drive 15 hours straight with two bathroom breaks and several different natural calamities attempting to disrupt everything."
Then I thought, "What an idiot."