On the return trip, outside of Denver, I pull up to a gas station in some non-existent town by the name of Hudson. A guy at another pump notices the keyboard in my back seat & strikes up a conversation. He also plays piano. He talks about the music industry & then lets the cat out of the bag, he is a charismatic preacher in Lamar Nebraska, and plays mostly worship music he says.
Am I a man of faith he asks? Nope I say and heroically wrestle the conversation over to something different. He asks me about job prospects and I tell him I am looking coastal.
"If you value your life don't go to the coasts," he tells me. He had just come back from San Fran. Everything we've seen recently points to a disaster that's going to completely wipe out the coasts. "A seismic earthquake," he says, stressing the word seismic, which must feel uncomfortable in its new role as a superlative, I think.
Now, I can't help but chuckle over this. Just a few weeks ago I predicted, jokingly of course, that with the end of the conflict in Iraq, the extreme right would probably want to bomb the hell out of San Fran next. Now I learn that they are instead invoking a divine earthquake. Okay.
"You think?" I ask Ron. Ron's his name.
"Think?" He laughs at my naivete. "I don't think. I know!"
Give me that earthquake already Ron. Anything is better than this. West Coast, here I come.
Posted by Alan at March 22, 2004 02:58 AM