H’okay, time to go to Yellowstone. Here are the daily pics of the drive:

Clearly ZZ-Top was on Top of his game en route to Yellowstone. To be completely frank, the ride was pretty boring and simple. It was a lot of watching the crew race each other via rubik’s cube, cause we’re that fucking cool. Much of the excitement occurred in the realm of gas stations, as always. In my previous post I talked a bit about how South Dakota has been stepping up its gas station game. Well, I think it may have met its match. Montana has been eyeing the pride and prize of having the greatest gas stations in the nation for a long time, and its really starting to show. Upon our stop in Montana, I found adjacent to the gas pumps something so much more spectacular than stuffed animal carcasses. Check it out:

Yeah. Montana is sporting a casino directly attached to the gas station. I just feel blessed to live in this country. Pumping gas is so boring. Montana recognizes this and believes that even vehicle maintenance should be a party. This is why Montana is widely regarded as the rage capital of the Northwest. After that we stumbled into a gas station in Billings, MT and a s’mores kit caught my eye. What a great way to bond with your fellow brethren and also eat chocolate. The mission was simple: pick up the chocolate, bring it to the cashier, pay the cashier an agreed upon amount of currency for said chocolate, and depart the gas station. But as most missions are concerned, things rarely go according to plan. The cashier was so perplexed by the pack of Hershey’s bars I gave him that he had to call headquarters for 25 minutes to figure out what was going on. I can only imagine the intensity and urgency the executive at headquarters must have felt as he raced to sort out this Hershey crisis. As the line halted and grew upon itself, people began talking and we made the acquaintance of two girls who were also headed to Yellowstone.  A Dutch girl by the name of Emmelyn and a German named Eva. The Dutch girl looked so Dutch and the German girl looked incredibly German. They were in Wyoming for six weeks to train horses, clearly a step-up from the boring European life. Our respective groups exchanged numbers to meet up and go hiking or look at rocks or whatever it is you do in Yellowstone. Probably the only time you can receive 11 digits and not be concerned. Eventually we succeeded in procuring the s’mores and we were our way. The drive into Yellowstone was fairly smooth. All jokes aside, the place is beautiful. Stupid beautiful.

The campground where we wanted to sleep was all full so we made due with another one called “Fishing Village”. No grills available and only 2 showers were allowed between the 6 of us per night in the facilities. So while Dave was cooking burgers on the stovetop, the rest of us performed a Hunger Games-esque ritual outside to determine who may shower. Dave was exempt because clearly he would just eat us if we tried fighting him. You can try guessing who won the Hunger Games but its not who you would expect. Unless you expected the martial arts expert “Brickface Hitmanlee” to win. Anyway, the six of us spent the night getting plastered in the RV on Steel Reserve, of course. We also shot a text out to Emmelyn inviting them to look at nature with us tomorrow. She responded, only time would tell whether we would ever actually see these foreigners again. As we pondered the uncertain future, GameMaster Roach led the group in activities he learned in boy scouts and ASB. We played Mao, a card game where the rules are unknown to all the players except for one. Everyone picked up on what was going on fairly quickly except for drunk Dave. Chemical Engineering never fully prepared him for the complexities of Mao. As Dave became increasingly frustrated and cursed out Roach, the stars twinkled, the moon winked, and we gradually lulled to sleep with plans to battle a Grizzly Bear in the morning and see some dope ass geysers.

So, we already covered the “Ice Burst” fiasco. The next step is to get into the RV and head to Mount Rushmore, as far away from those evil showers as possible. Curious about how the drive went? Of course you are, you’re on smelliots. Instead of cracking some joke, I’ll just post these two pictures to sum it up:

Good ride. Roach and Dave were the first two shifts, 2 hours a piece to get us the 4 hours to Mount Rushmore. Do you know what a cockroach and an abnormally tall hick from Charlotte have in common? Practically nothing, I would be amazed if you knew the answer to this question. The common connection is that they both love pounding down Steel Reserves once their driving duties are finished. Alas, the RV showed a distinct dearth of Steel Reserve and we needed to replenish at a gas station near Rushmore. In most states, humans experience a pretty ordinary set of sensations when dealing with a gas station. South Dakota, however, has completely expanded on what it means to sell gas to its citizens. When I entered the station, I came across an amenity I truly never expected. I wandered into a room full-to-the-brim with stuffed animal carcasses, ranging from the very cute to the ferociously fierce. Take a look:

At that very moment I had a surprisingly strong desire to buy a bunch of gas. Well played, South Dakota gas station. Anyway, Roach and Dave get their precious beer and we make it to Mount Rushmore.  I need to address a small detail that surprised me. There is an immeasurable number of Asians who frequent Mount Rushmore. These weren’t Asian-Americans, or even Asians who were visiting American relatives. I checked.  Its not like they visited here on the way to some other tourist attraction, its South Dakota. These thousands of Asians traveled across the globe to visit Mount Rushmore. Maybe I’m overthinking this but what is going on. Americans don’t even go to South Dakota. Most Americans probably couldn’t even name which four presidents are on the mountain. But apparently there is a significant population of Asia who has seen all this first-hand and has an in-depth knowledge of our country’s beginnings. Why do they care? Anyway, the mountain was dope. Geoffrey asked one of the Chinese families to take a picture for us in his native tongue. Here’s the crew enjoying one of America’s great majesties:

I thought it was interesting how Theodore Roosevelt looks like a total loser here. He’s just poking his head out, waiting for the day his rock wig is as rocking as Washington’s rock wig. Tough luck Roosevelt, not gonna happen. I get that he was a great president, but he was so clearly an afterthought when considering America’s greatest presidents. In fact, here is the original envisioned design:

I know what you’re thinking: It kind of looks like the premise for a reality television show where three gay dads raise a son in a non-traditional household setting. Except the son is actually the greatest country on the planet. We didn’t stay for very long. We were on a tight schedule because we still had plans to stop at Devil’s tower and end our day’s journey in Keyhole State Park before the sun sets. Camo Dave, Brickface, and Nasty Nas were jonesing for some fishing time while the sun was still in the sky. With that in mind, we hustled over to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. For those who don’t know what Devil’s Tower is, basically a bunch of lava flowed for millions of years and made a rock formation that sorta looks like a majestic bundt cake. We all know how much the Devil loves bundt cake. It is also topped off with the flaming eye of Mordor, and orc hordes regularly patrol the surrounding area on an hourly basis. Even more than orcs, apparently the Devil is also really really into prairie dogs. We parked the RV near the tower and completely surrounding us were thousands of acres of prairie dog holes. It was astonishing how friendly they were, depsite being demon messengers. We all got really close to the ground and started cooing at them, because it only takes a couple seconds to become a prairie dog whisperer. They refused to let me pet them and I wasn’t sure how else to put up a facebook-like-worthy video. We tried feeding them Honey Nut Cheerios but the bastards knew what we were trying to do. Prairie dogs don’t have facebooks so obviously they don’t give a fuck. Anyway, about 20 minutes passed before we remembered that the Devil’s Tower was behind us. It was pretty cool. We snapped a quick pic and we were off:

On to Keyhole. It was my turn to drive the RV and to everyone’s utter surprise, we survived. Camo Dave was so excited to fish that he jumped out of the RV door while I was still pulling into the campground, his shorts ripped clean off as it got stuck on the door handle. He had ingested Steel Reserves by this point. Dinnertime was here and we had everything we needed to grill. Raw burgers and dogs and a grill, booyah. No lighter? no problem. No lighter fluid? no problem. No spatula? Ha, fuck that, we’ll flip the patties with our hands like real men. In all seriousness though, we were real underprepared and had to appeal to our campground neighbor for supplies. The guy was surprisingly generous, but we were on our own for the spatula. We flattened a Steel Reserve, stuck a stick into it, wrapped the whole deal in aluminum foil and called it a day. We wanted to thank the mystery man for his good deeds by offering our supply of Steel Reserve, but he retorted that he only drinks his own homemade brews. Bad. Ass. Probably the coolest yet creepiest guy I have come across. We ended the night with a bonfire. We held hands and sang “American Pie” while burning Dave’s shorts. Slumbered on the kitchen table set again. Good night. In the morning we make our way to the great Yellowstone Park: I’ll keep you updated.

The trip begins. Let’s take a look at the digs we’re working with:

So, it seems we have a queen bed (a.k.a. the coffin) above the driver’s seat, a couch that miraculously converts into a full bed, a little dining set that even more miraculously converts into a twin bed, and finally the badass queen bedroom in the back. we also have a shower that we are essentially forbidden to use and a toilet that we are half-forbidden to use, if you catch my drift.

The trip yesterday was a doozie. The crew departed Chicago at 2:30 PM with clear eyes and full hearts, we couldn’t lose. Our sights were set on Lake Mitchell in South Dakota. The driving schedules were already set and each of us drove our alotted 2 hours 15 minutes, excluding myself. My time of reckoning was to come the following day, but we’ll get to that.

Tried reading a book, made it 15 pages. Tried playing chess, but the pieces moved around too much. Tried doing pushups, but I fell on my face. I’m already learning a lot about myself, notably that I don’t have what it takes to exist in a recreational vehicle.

I reached my existential pinnacle in the middle of rural Minnesota. We stopped to get gas. Outside there were howling winds with an accompanying chill of 35 degrees. That didn’t stop us from making new friends though. As we emerged from the RV, we laid our eyes on an obese, black man wearing nothing but heart-covered boxers and a wife-beater. Next to him was a similarly obese black women who looked strikingly like a prostitute. Heels, nudity, weird-colored lipstick, etc.  Now normally I don’t accuse people of being sex workers without proper evidence, its just not my way. However, this case was incredibly obvious. I don’t imagine any scenario where this poor woman would lack so much clothing with such chilling temperatures, unless her living truly depended upon her cleavage. Anyway, it brought me to consider the different forms that love can take and how each one is special in its own way. And then I thought about Arby’s. There was one across the street from the gas station so I ran there barefoot and ordered chicken tenders, curly fries, and so much ranch. Let me tell you: there are a lot of things I do in my life that make my parents proud, I think. But I have doubts that my mother would feel such a way if she had seen me eating Arby’s alone in the pitch-dark of the RV. The car would exert a certain jolt every couple seconds so I had to hold the curly fries between my legs, the ranch in my left hand, the chicken tenders in my mouth, and the Steel Reserve in my right hand. By the way, Minnesota may be creepy at times, but they sold me a 4-pack of 16 oz Steel Reserves for 3 dollars so the state is alright in my book. Anyway, my right hand left the Steel Reserve to reach for the crotch fries at the exact moment we hit one of those lovable jolts in the road and my beer was gone like that. What’s even sadder than the lost beer? My lost dignity and the night spent sleeping on the beer-soaked dining set/bed.

We finally arrived in Lake Mitchell at 2:30 AM with plans to wake up at 7:45. That plan came true. As rough as the morning may have been for the night owls out there, feel grateful that yours was nothing like mine. When my phone vibrated at 7:45, I didn’t realize we had to be on the road at 8:00 sharp, I didn’t understand that it would be 36 degrees outside, and I didn’t comprehend just how viciously I would need a shower. With swift grace, I ran barefoot in the cold to the campground showers. For those who don’t know about campground showers: let me illuminate you. It is so incredibly generous to call these things “showers”. “Ice Burst” would be more fitting I think. So the way this Ice Burst worked was that every 3 seconds I had to fully push down a nearby button that would send out a pulse of icy water, probably clocking in around 45 degrees. The water was seriously so cold to a point that as my body trembled and shivered, it was difficult to keep the shampoo contained in my hand and also periodically press the button with sufficient speed. After a 45-second shower and 15 button-pushes later, I sped away and recovered to the point where we managed to take some real classy pictures of us at Lake Mitchell:

Ladies, restrain yourselves: Dave is taken, but Geoffrey with the sexy hair flip is most definitely on the market.

So we headed out for the day with our destination set for Keyhole, Wyoming with  hopeful stops at a Wal-mart, Mt. Rushmore, and Devil’s Tower along the way. Stay tuned to hear about the great deals we get on bananas, who my favorite founding father is, and my views on satanical towers and their place in a modern, capitalist society.

Some of you may think you know a thing or two about the Nashville nightlife. Where’s the most poppin’ place to be at 3 AM on a Saturday night? Its not about  closing out at Rippy’s or keeping the party going at Deja Vu. Nope. All the natives know that the Greyhound bus station is where the party is at. A truly magical place where people come together for the common purpose of raging. And this is where Zach and I had the pleasure of finding ourselves.

The greatest part about the Nashville greyhound station at 3 AM is that you know everyone has your back. Everyone is on the same team: nobody asks each other for sandwich money or thinks about taking each other’s valuables during a bathroom trip. A special place for wonderful people.

The second greatest detail about a 3 AM greyhound is that you don’t need to worry about sleeping beforehand whatsoever. A  10-and-a-half hour trip to Chicago allows for plenty of opportunities to sleep. As long as you perform a physiologically impossible distortion of the spine and neck, your head will comfortably find itself on the shoulder of your fat, indian neighbor. A fat, indian neighbor who has consumed so much curry that the only explanation is that he knew he would sit next to you on this bus and has been training for weeks just to consistently exhale his nation’s cuisine into your face for half a day. Ah yes, the greyhound experience.

As the clock ticks away and 2:30 arrives, Zach and I finally deboard the bus and find ourselves in the greatest city Illinois has to offer, Chicago. Here is where we pick up our RV. But more importantly, we find ourselves in an exciting metropolis that offers the best deep dish on the planet, and other stuff too I’m guessing.

We make our way to Cloud Gate, the most spectacular giant, reflective bean that Chicago has to offer. I always like to compare the giant beans I see when visiting various cities and Chicago definitely takes the cake. Then I saw the outside of the renowned Chicago art institute, it looked sturdy. On to pizza. So much pizza. Chicago deep-dish completely redefines the concept of pizza. Before this day, I viewed eating pizza as a relaxing experience among friends. Split a pepperoni and leave the meal feeling fulfilled and happier because of it. That’s not how Chicago deep-dish works. Chicago’s greatest goal is to lure you in with seductive stories and pictures of melted cheese and crunchy crust. Instead, they forcibly shove as much tomato sauce, cheese, bread, and other miscellaneous ingredients into your digestive system until you’re physically crawling away from the table to escape. Deep dish knows no sense of moderation, and the result is the most depressing walk away you’ve ever known.

Time to see the rest of Chicago. Zach and I heard about a movie playing at a local theatre called “The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron”. We figured we would take in the Chicago culture and give the film a try. Chicago AMC theatres is world-renowned for the plushiness of its seats, and I must say they lived up to their reputation. Movie was great, the good guys won with minimal civilian casualties, and Scarlet Johanssen is still so beautiful. After the 141 minute movie, Zach and I felt satisfied in absorbing the totality of Chicago’s sites and culture. Why anyone would ever leave a city that blows 45 degree winds in your face in the middle of May and also has a big, reflective bean totally boggles me. Nevertheless the next morning comes and an RV trip must be born. Sir Bradley Roche has the first driving shift. Stay tuned for a full description of the RV cast and crew and relevant pictures.

To my friends, family, and enemies –

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be on a road trip across the US with a few other recent Vandy graduates. Creating a blog called smelliots is the obvious choice in keeping track of what happens to me and my friends as we figure out how an RV works on this journey from Chicago to San Francisco. Some of you out there reading these words might not care whats happening to Geoffrey, but my mom does so I need to provide her that service. I hope my stories and thoughts inspire whims of adventure and sometimes skepticism as to why you take precious time to read what I have to say. On a serious note, leaving vanderbilt is a tough transition for everyone and I’m hoping that smelliots will be a good way for people to know that I’m still kicking and as weird as when you knew me on graduation day. So for my friends, you all can make fun of this ridiculous blog. For my enemies, I guess I’ll make it easier for you to track my whereabouts.