There are many many nice things about touring around like this, with no real destination and no purpose. One of the nicest though, is that all you really need from your fellow man is basic decency and kindness. You don't need people to like you, you don't need them to entertain you, you just need them not to threaten you and to give you directions to a good breakfast place. Which, by and large, they are ready, willing, and able to do.

I got into Minneapolis around 6, 6:30 Wed. night. I had made friends on the bus with the blonde girl who had been talking to the Mormons. She had a fantastic hat, and had been working at a ranch up in Kalispell for a couple months. She was heading for North Carolina, she wanted to see what it was like. She was 21. There's something terrifying about talking to someone younger when you don't feel any sense of your own superior wisdom; it gives you vertigo. We started talking after we had stayed together through something like three consecutive bus changes. The people that change buses with you, they're your platoon. You're all in this together.

Anyway, we went to a downtown bar. I asked the waiter if he knew where I should stay if I wanted easy access to food and places to walk around. He started making suggestions. Then he started calling the hotels for me. There was some kind of massive convention going on, and every place was booked. He dragged the other waiter into it. They worked the phones for about twenty minutes, and at the end I had a hotel room. That's probably a little above basic decency and kindness; either way, it was great. I saw the blonde girl back to her bus change; we hugged and traded phone numbers.

Now I'm staying at a Day's Inn, which feels like the height of modern luxury. And there's something really comforting about being back in a city.

Song of the Day: Willie Nelson, Pancho and Lefty