DAY 6 - Saturday, July 13, 1968

day 6

Chapter 13

JOHN AND SYLVIA EAT THEIR BREAKFAST HOT CAKES AND DRINK their coffee, still caught up in the mood of last night, but I'm finding it hard to get food down.

Breakfast in Gardiner before they're on the road.

The sagebrush down the canyon now toward Livingston is like sagebrush you see all the way from here into Mexico.

Heading up to Livingston.

We reach an intersection where the road from the park joins the main east-west highway, stop and turn on to it. From here we go over a low pass and into Bozeman itself. The road goes up now, heading west, and suddenly I'm looking forward to what's ahead.

This reference, and the "interstate freeway" reference in the next chapter, tell us they've turned onto I-90 in Livingston heading west toward Bozeman. US-10 does parallel the interstate, but looks like they hop on the freeway instead.

Chapter 14

This picture-postcard scenery vaguely fits memory but not definitely. This interstate freeway we are on must not have existed then.

So again, they're definitely on I-90, but his memory doesn't match because he probably used US-10 in the past.

This isn't really a small town. People are moving too fast and too independently of one another. It's one of these population fifteen-to-thirty-thousand towns that isn't exactly a town, not exactly a city—not exactly anything really. We eat lunch in a glass-and-chrome restaurant that brings no recall at all.

They're in Bozeman now. Current population: 45,000.

I go to a phone book and look for Robert DeWeese's number

From the town to the mountains across the valley floor must be less than ten miles, and we cross that distance now on dirt roads through rich green high alfalfa ready for cutting, so thick it looks difficult to walk through.

We round a corner and suddenly enter the pines and a very steep V canyon in the mountain, and there right beside the road is a large grey house with an enormous abstract iron sculpture attached to one side and beneath it sitting in a chair tipped back against the house surrounded by company is the living image of DeWeese himself with a can of beer in his hand, which waves to us.

They call the DeWeeses, get their address, and arrive. This completes the first "half" of the trip - 6 days to Bozeman, 6 more riding days to San Francisco. We know the area the DeWeeses live, but there's no cause to go there on my modern recreation.

"This does it...this just does the whole thing for us....Now we can go back for another eight years on Twenty-six-forty-nine Colfax Avenue."

This is John referencing his home address in Minneapolis. This address is the most likely starting point for the trip itself, assuming Pirsig and Chris came from their home to meet with John and Sylvia at their house.

...Continue to Days 7-11