Nevada and South Dakota: First Team All-America: Men's and Women's Misery

Jackson Hole was cool. And like all great guests, we ate a ton of French Onion Soup and then took off early in the morning to tackle the 11 hour drive to Reno, NV ahead of us.

This "getting a jump on the day" was quickly thwarted 10 minutes outside Jackson Hole by a snowy mountain pass, where only cars with "Snow Tires" were admitted. We stealthily snuck by the Snow Tire Checker Police (who didn't exist), and Keith, Myself, my shitbox of a car and my all-weather radials efforted ourselves up the mountain at break-nail speeds. When we reached the top, we realized my car was morbidly overstuffed/obese with all of my belongings and getting it to slow down on ice and a severe downslope on the backside of the mountain was like getting a middle school girlfriend to throw her inhibitions to the wayside. Slow going it was, and after driving down the mountain in 2nd gear, we retreated to lower elevations and smoother, less icy roads... for the next 10 hours.

Nevada was dreadful. boring. deserted. depressing. brown. (insert any other b or d word here and you catch my drift). To combat the boredom, we popped in the unabridged book on take edition of "The Odyssey".

Sitting in the shotgun position, I fell asleep within two minutes. Keith, sitting in and performing the driver position, kept his eyes open for a good 5 minutes before opening all the windows, changing to some bogus Nevada radio station and blasting the music full tilt.. obviously waking me up in the process. Throughout the course of our drive, we attempted the Odyssey on several more occasions. In each event, I would zone out/fall asleep/want to jump out of the moving car so not to have to listen to it/etc and Keith would endure for between 5-20 minutes before nearly nodding off or succumbing to the pure misery of the unabridged dialogue of the reading.

And still, before each time putting it back in, I would excitedly ask Keith to give me a 20 second synopsis of what I missed, convinced that I would pay attention this time around. I was wrong every time.

We made it to Reno, which, consistent with all things Nevada, can be summed up in one D-word.. Depressing.

Until... you win $200 like Keith did at the Blackjack table, then it becomes depressingly entertaining. I won $25, which I can't complain about, seeing as though my typical casino output involves me losing 7/8 of my money in the first 10 minutes and then bleeding the remaining 1/8 over the course of the next 30 minutes while in a bastardly foul mood.

We knew when to walk away, and thusly retreated to our hotel room at "The Celebrity Hotel and Resort" which, I would wager my entire life savings on, has never had a celebrity step foot on the premises.

The next morning, we left "the Celebrity H & R" in search of a breakfast place. After 30 minutes of search, I settled on Burger King and Keith settled on Taco Bell, as the two adjoining restaurants were all we could find in that hell hole of a city.