I decided to stay at my motorsports photographer buddy Stephen’s house a couple days since I got a call to edit some video for a client and need a place to work. I set up shop on Stephen’s dining room table, opened up Final Cut Pro and got back in the groove.
It’s pretty nice to have the kind of gig where you can work wherever you happen to be. Here I am in a small Idaho town where the nearest Walmart is a 45 minute drive and I’m editing motorcycle videos from an event in Indianapolis. Pretty cool.
When Stephen gets back from his office we decide to go to the little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in town. It’s a Monday night and not much is going on in Aberdeen. Actually, I’m pretty sure we could just shorten that to “it’s night and not much is going on in Aberdeen”. The food is awesome – I have a fajita burrito and the thing is so huge I’ve got enough for lunch tomorrow. After dinner we hang out and talk about business and motorcycles. Not a bad evening at all.
I wake up Tuesday morning and immediately get to work. I’ve got a new web site design to launch, another site design to start and now a video to edit. Things are moving right along. I also get a hold of the folks at ATK Motorcycles and arrange a meeting/interview with their CEO on Wednesday in Utah. I’ll be using the video interview for yet another project I’m working on and it will be great to get to know the folks at the U.S. based bike manufacturer.
Dinner tonight is going to be at Homer’s Bar & Grill in Springfield. You Simpsons fans let that one soak in for a minute. Apparently tourists tend to wander into this bar now & again thinking it has some affiliation with the TV show. But make no mistake, this is a tried & true locals bar and it’s just plain cool.
The first thing I notice is that Stephen and I are the only guys in the bar without full beards. The next thing I notice is that Stephen knows half of the guys that are in here. These guys are great! A bunch of old farmers & ranchers & such with local roads named after them and a million great stories to tell. Here’s an example…
“About 20 years ago I was taking a piss down by the culvert. I didn’t know it but I dropped my wallet and I had 180 dollars in there. I figured it was lost for good and then about a week later I get a notice that my wallet is down at the post office. I go and pick it up and the money was all in there.”
Then there is Bill, who was in the military and stationed in a UK town in the 1960s where Stephen’s relatives happened to live. Well after Bill took a dip of his Long Cut Cougar chewing tobacco he proceeds to tell us how he only had to work a few hours a day and then he’d travel around to all the country towns in Scotland and drink beer and meet loose women. “They loved Americans back then,” he said “and I could do no wrong.”
We have a couple drinks (which all come with crocheted beer cozies and a round of which were bought for us by Bill) and some pretty darn good bar food. The french fries are out of this world – most likely because the potatoes came out of the ground up the road this morning. How cool is that? As I’m eating I see a guy order a beer, say goodbye to everyone, then leave with the bottle. I mention what I saw and a fellow next to me says “Yeah, he ordered a Sterling beer.” Looked like a Bud to me. “No, you know Sterling Road. The one back off the highway. You take that one to get back into town.” Unreal, you order a Sterling beer (which comes in any brand you like) and drink it on the way home taking the back road to avoid the eyes of the highway patrol. Wow. I’m driving so Stephen orders the Sterling.
Tomorrow I head to Utah for the interview and if I’m not too tired I’ll push on to Las Vegas to spend a few days with my buddy Lee and his family since he’s got a bunch of days off. After that I’m California bound and the trip will be complete. Less than 900 miles to go…
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