Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2 if you want the full scoop.
In case you forgot where we left off this should jog your memory. We had to make a stop for gas before leaving Las Vegas so we stopped at an AM-PM across the street from the Luxor. After getting some Cheez-Its inside I waltzed back to the spot where we’d parked and hopped in the passenger seat.“Can I help you?” said a dubious voice from the driver's seat. I confusedly panned my head over to see a middle-aged man staring at me as if to say “why is this sexy ass stranger in my car?”
Apparently my buddy Chris had moved the car while I was inside so the car that I thought was ours was actually some random guy’s very similar car; that’s my bad so if you’re reading this random guy I’m really sorry for scaring you. Imagine the fear you’d feel if a guy with a lot of face, dressed in all black like I was dressed, and in an open carry gun state like Nevada, hopped into your car on the Vegas strip.
You’d probably think they were gonna steal your spleen and sell it to the Pawn Stars guys down the street.
We hauled fuckin’ butt outta Nevada and headed to a place that’s the polar opposite of Vegas' debauchery: Salt Lake City; a place that feels almost cartoonishly wholesome. If, in this bad metaphor, Vegas has shifty eyes then Salt Lake City glares into your soul with unrelenting eye contact that knows you never returned that Debbie Does Dallas VHS from Albertsons years ago. We didn’t have a place to stay in Utah but since the Container Store parking lot had been a blast we figured we’d find another dumb location and sleep there.
At around 9:30pm we were about 20 minutes outside of Salt Lake City when the light rain turned into hail, then into a full on blizzard with the swiftness of Taylor. Our lack of planning was once again digging its teeth into our unsuspecting rumps. Stupid us. We hadn’t even considered that driving to Utah in the dead of winter might mean snow and now we were fishtailing in bumper to bumper traffic on an snowy freeway in a compact car with no winter tires.
We had to summon our courage the only way we knew how so I did what anybody would do: put on Cher’s 1998 classic hit “Believe”; the ball’s in your court, weather. By the time Cher got around to the chorus four cars about 25 yards ahead of us let Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints take the wheel but the multi-car fender bender was unavoidable. We escaped without wrecking and those that weren’t as fortunate WERE ALL FINE despite some car damage because, thankfully, traffic had slowed down enough at that point for the pile up to be not as dangerous as it could've been.
Eventually and carefully we managed to get off the road to pull into the first building we saw in SLC. It happened to be a sports pub called Legends that also happened to sell Texas-sized pizzas at an affordable Utah price. After I popped my coochie at Legends we went back to the car in the parking lot to figure out our sleeping situation. At 1am it was still blizzardy and somewhere below 20 degrees but we had blankets and a brave naivety derived mostly from sleep deprivation so we closed our eyes.
Every window of the car was fully covered in snow so part of the appeal of sleeping in it, besides sheer desperation, was the childlike enjoyment of being in what felt like an impenetrable fortress. Eventually though, we were yanked out of the early stages of sleep by a firm tapping on the window. “Our fortress isn’t impenetrable” I soberly accepted in my head as adrenaline started pumping at the thought of who was tapping.
I position my feet into what I felt like would be a strong kicking position in case I needed to put a boot to the squash of whoever was doin’ the tappin’. We cracked the window and as a blanket of snow avalanched to the ground the face of a plump security guard ghoulishly peered into the car.
Long story short the guy made us leave and was a bit of a dick about it but then again he was tasked with patrolling the property at 2am in a snowstorm so fair play to him. We had to relocate immediately so we navigated through the city streets like phantoms of the night in search of another parking lot to reestablish our impenetrable fortress, which we eventually succeeded in doing thanks to a Chevron in the area.
The next morning we got up, brushed our fangs in the bathroom of a gas station/Burger King combo store and headed to a rad little coffee shop called Three Pines Coffee in downtown SLC. I’d heard about Three Pines Coffee because it’s owned and operated by the family and former band-mates of my all-time singer crush, Dia Frampton.
Once inside we talked with the staff and they were hella friendly. We even got roasted like a medium blend by bold bean Jade, Dia Frampton's younger sister who works there. I feel like a bit of a jerk for saying “Dia’s younger sister" but it’s a part of the story!
Here's the burn she put on us, or I guess more on our school's tennis team?: My friend Chris mentioned something about our school, Chico State, and she let us know that the Chico State women’s tennis team routinely got molly-whopped by her and her team during her time at Saint Mary’s College. Pretty damn awesome. Loved it. The visit to the coffee shop was easily the highlight of the entire trip for me.
We sat there in that humble little coffee shop sipping delicious hot chocolate and thinking about how far we’d come; how far we’d have to travel back. I stared down at my drink musing about life when my ears detected a familiar base-line fade up from the shop’s speakers. It couldn’t be, could it? It got louder and louder before I finally gave in to the rhythm. “Do youuuu belieeeve in liiifffe affttter looovve” the speakers yelled. Yup. It was Cher’s 1998 fuckin’ pop-techo banger “Believe”.
