On the Road

By Des Moines, all we could think about was getting to Chicago. We were psyched. But we weren’t there yet. We wanted to save ourselves up and get strong. We chanced on a place to spend the night that must be what the RV Gods begin to dole out to you once you’ve got a few thousand miles and one or two waste hose accidents under your belt. There was a lake (that remained visible at night), an indoor heated pool and a hot tub with a view. We stayed 2 nights and did much that was restorative and strength-building. I’m still a city boy at heart, so it’s still a little weird for me to walk around in woodsy places at night. Of course I know there’s nothing out there… intellectually. But I guess I just don’t have enough experience listening to the sound of my own twig-snapping feet in the middle of the night to chase away the Bogey Man inside my head. On the 2nd night, I made myself walk all the way around the lake in the dead of night. When I was almost back to the RV and feeling all self-congratulatory, I reminded myself that I was not really in the woods. Nevertheless, the triumph meant something to me.

The clock finally struck “tits!” and we happened to be in the State of Nebraska.

We were looking for a strip club run by a fella named Jeremy that was supposed to sit on the Nebraska/Iowa state line. That proved difficult, since the state line is the Missouri River. We crossed the bridge into Iowa and followed a sign for “casino”… thinking we might ask casino type folk about the location of the strip club. A feisty fifty-something blonde named Karen overheard me asking at the door, came over and gave me directions to the “best litle tittie bar in Iowa”… a place she said she owned. “I’ll meet ya there” she shouted from her white Cadillac. How could I refuse.

When we got there 2 girls named Trina and Roxy (above) were sitting at the bar, looking bored and lamenting it being a Monday. Behind the bar was Rachel, with a great smile, a good head on her shoulders, but no apparent desire to leave the place where she was born. Ogre was a 6 foot 6, 400 hundred pound, baby-faced good ole boy, just a few years past his small-town football hero prime. He was obviously there to bounce the occassional tittie toucher, but was trying to graduate up to the higher-paying, less violent work behind the bar.

Karen had apparently called ahead and said that we should be taken care of.

We had ourselves a real good time at Lipstix in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Great people watching there.