A Letter to My Friend's Girlfriend

My friend from high school, Doug, who now lives in Las Vegas, has read my book (I think).  His girlfriend, Alison, hasn’t.  So I sent her the following letter, both as friendly couple-to-couple gesture (my wife and I, and her and Doug), and also as a way to promote the events in my book that happen in Las Vegas.  Here’s the letter:

Hi Alison, Doug better give you a copy of my book, We Picked Up, as a Mother’s Day present BECAUSE after seeing your rather generic street name Pinehurst Drive (sorry, I’m sure it’s anything but) from your thank you card, it brought back to mind several watershed events that occur in my book in Las Vegas. One, the guys arrive into town across the Mojave desert with a horse-faced driver with leukemia and his 300-pound mother who does nothing but berate him. To me, this is the funniest part of the book, especially after the guy’s car breaks down and the two hitchhikers have to push the dead car into a service area. When they arrive into Las Vegas, Roger (i.e. me) is stunned that a normal, everyday neighborhood exists in Las Vegas (“What’ll they think of next?” he says). On top of that, the two characters are fighting like cats and dogs but make up in Las Vegas and go up a few notches on the maturity scale. And on page 297, in North Las Vegas, the words “We picked up” are actually written as a three-word sentence. 
That’s where I got the title.  So there you have it! Thanks for your card . . . it was great hosting you guys (even though I won the Antiques Roadshow appraiser contest!), and I’m sure looking for an excuse (and time slot) for Wonza and me to come to Nevada!   Sincerely, Ken

The Buddhist Lingo

I hope I got the Buddhist lingo right on Day 33-35, the part where Roger and Otto take the sidetrip to the Grand Canyon. I also hope I got the Buddhist atmosphere right. Since this is a made-up episode, patched together only partially from other trips and experiences I had over the years, I couldn’t rely on direct memory to help me out.  I had to learn what a Buddhist wedding entailed, what words were right for the characters, and to set the mood.  I also needed it to somehow jell and conform (i.e. make it appealing and accepting) to a liberal Christian standpoint as well. Bottom line, I wanted it to be fun and didn’t want to offend anyone. I had to make Norbert and Vanessa’s wedding real, yet a point of distraction to Roger as he considers the awesome backdrop. And then we have the presence of sweet Gwen, who painted the hippie bus with the mantra, “Love All, Hurt None.” The budding friendship between her and Roger had to be as compatible and smooth as the tenants between Buddhism and Christianity; at least that’s what I pushed for. Though Roger and Otto agreed, “It’s all one God anyway,” to Roger, “it still has to square with Jesus Christ.” So there was a lot working out on these pages. One of my favorite parts of the book is on the morning of Day 35, when Roger and Otto are camping the night after the sidetrip and banter back and forth with playfulness: “I got all tuckered out channelin’ my bliss through the abstractions of my mental sphere.” “We purified our formless receptacles, Otto.  We made our material planes immune to delusion.”

Three Weeks Without a Bed

At the start of Day Twenty, page 187, Roger wakes up at his Aunt Betty’s house, lounging in luxurious sheets, where “no cops will be rooting me out here.” He ruminates how he made it almost three weeks without sleeping in a bed. After a split moment of self-congratulatory conceit, he thinks further and decides, “It’s pretentious to presume that going a couple of weeks without basic necessities is a long time.  People survive ordeals much more demanding than this journey. What am I boasting about? What right do I have to gloat?” How glad I am to have come to this realization. Yes, Roger can act like a pompous ass with his over-confident attitude, but not this time. He gets the perspective right. The rough style in which they were living was no big deal. “It was my CHOICE to live this way,” he thinks. “How dare that I think this is something special? I can hardly claim being thrust into dire hardship.  It ain’t this. No bed, so what?  Same as with not taking a shower.  Or not eating meals.  Or not wearing clean clothes.  What do I have to complain about?  Twenty days is nothing.  Go a year or more, Winans.  Then you’ll have something to write about.” That’s why you don’t see Roger Winans complaining much in this book. He understands that this 40-day cross-country junket is more or less an amusement park glee run (as he says himself on page 5) that he wanted very much to take. What was there to complain about? Nothing.