Lake Have-a-screw

After three days of camping we packed up our shit and headed back to civilization. As we were filling up on gas we noticed that a golf-ball-sized bubble had formed on the front right tire. Though we can’t prove it, we believed this to be the work of those pieces of shit at campsite #25. Unfortunately, we were already too far away to retaliate so we had to settle for a scathing comment on a blog with a dwindling fan base. Those guys are douche bags. It was a Sunday so we couldn’t find any tire stores that were open but we talked to what appeared to be some sort of mechanic at a gas station and he told us that the bubble was extremely dangerous and the tire would explode if we drove any further on it. Not one to trust a mechanic, Corey decided to call his dad and get a second opinion. Although his dad had apparently drank a bottle of scotch for breakfast and clearly had no idea what we were talking about, we decided to take his advice to “stop being pussies” and so we headed east.

We were on our way to Grand Canyon when we saw a sign for Lake Havasu and immediately decided to change course towards the Spring Break Capital of the Interior Southwest. As we pulled into Havasu we instantly entered into Spring Break Mode and sought out the partyingest beach-side bar in town for some afternoon drinking. A quick poll of the locals revealed that The Naked Turtle was the bar for us. The Turtle has everything you could possibly want in a Spring Break bar: beach-side location, tropical drinks and, most importantly, no one under the age of 53. While we were sitting at the bar choking down our $8 Naked Turtle Napalm Bombers (one part Bacardi 151, two parts mango juice, 15 parts Grenadine) we were approached by a smokin’ hot bombshell named Tammy, soon to be known as The Tamster. She was obviously drawn in by my Big Dog cutoff and able to look past my comically Little Dog biceps. We immediately hit it off and she invited us to stay at her house within the first five minutes of conversation. As we talked on, she opened up and told me about how she had only recently escaped her nightmare of a previous life in Spokane as a “corporate wife.” After her divorce she moved to her summer home in Lake Havasu and it only took “fucking nearly every guy at The Naked Turtle” (read in Cap’n Dan Voice) before she found true happiness in the form of a six-foot leather-skinned, Marlboro Menthol chain-smoking, renaissance man who goes by the self-given nickname, Cap’n Dan. As Tammy and I were discussing our love of afternoon drinking, her “man” walked up, took one look at us and immediately vetoed her previous offer of a place to stay for the night. Apparently, Cap’n Dan, known as Big Poppa Boondoggle in the grifter community, saw right through our not-so-clever ruse and instantly launched into his patented two-part grifter validation test. The first part of this test consisted of a rapid-fire barrage of ethnic jokes (i.e. What did they call Tiger Woods in college? Nigger). We passed with flying colors, laughing just hard enough to signify that we appreciated the cleverness of the jokes but not hard enough to signify that we were racists. We ordered some beers and continued our conversation at the bar. Cap’n Dan told us all about his life in Havasu, his days of driving truck and how he inherited a monster dick from his black grandpa (his justification for telling exclusively racist jokes).

(Cap'n Dan)

Eventually we earned his trust and were reinvited to their place for dinner and part two of the test, the BYO(and Dan’s)B beer chug challenge. Dan handed us a soaking wet five dollar bill and instructed us to buy him a six-dollar pack of Marlboro Menthols and a “30-Bomb” of Coor’s Light, one of his patented scams.

When we got to their house Cap’n Dan was firing up the grill. We offered him a beer and he accepted without hesitation. While we were waiting for the food to cook we talked about life on the lake, sports, and the Tamster’s god-given ability to “fuck his brains out,” a topic which would be shamelessly brought up no less than 300 times throughout the night. Before long we were served a spectacular meal of grilled pork loin, fancy mashed potatoes and salad. Apparently, Dan knows his way around the grill and Tammy is more than just a hot piece of ass. As the night progressed we made a sizeable dent in our beer supply and the conversation became slightly more serious. The more he talked the more I realized that Cap’n Dan was one of the most fascinating people I have had the pleasure of meeting. For a small insight into the man, the myth and the legend here are a few of the more interesting things we learned about Dan:

- Dan has been extremely interested in spirituality throughout the course of his life and has explored several unusual but highly interesting paths. He once paid money to be dropped off by a helicopter in the middle of a dessert with nothing to eat. After two full days the helicopter dropped food rations to him and for the next five days Dan found his way back using only a compass as a guide. This experience was so positive for him that he now often drives his boat upriver and camps for a few days at a time to meditate. During these trips he has nothing to eat and claims that these are the times in his life when his mind is at its clearest and he develops his best ideas.

- After earning a sizeable amount of money working for Chevron (we suspect he sold gas to kids for huffing) he embarked on a three-year road trip around the United States, once again proving that he is vastly superior to us. He made the trip in an RV and along the way joined up with fellow road trippers and became the ringleader of the first RV gang in modern history. He earned leader status by stabbing an 80-year-old man unprovoked with a sharpened plastic spoon and thereby asserted his dominance over all. After a long and storied road trip and an even longer stint in federal prison they changed their name from Cap’n Dan and the Gas Guzzlers to their current and more applicable name, The Aryan Brotherhood.

- Although he didn’t need the money, Dan recently chose to drive truck for nearly a full year of his life. During this trucker period Dan really honed his grifter skills. He taught us that nearly everything you needed on the road could be swindled from various truck stops. For a free meal you can eat at a Flying J and walk out, for a free fountain drink or shower go to a Pilot and for a free HJ head on over to Truck Stops of America. As he was explaining the trucker lifestyle I felt that I had finally found my true calling in life, a job that combines my addiction of traveling with my other addiction of crystal meth. Unfortunately, however, the benefits are slightly outweighed by the downsides: being a trucker.

At the tail end of the night we informed them that we had some weed in the car. Tammy was overly excited and urged us to roll a joint because Dan had apparently never had the experience of smoking “BC Bud.” I’m fairly sure that we had none of this “BC Bud” she spoke of but we played along and Corey “The Unnecessarily Slow Joint Rolling Machine” Johnson rolled up one of his famous four-hit joints. Once we lit up, about an hour later, Dan and Tammy told us that they couldn’t smoke because of upcoming drug tests at work. We felt that this was a little odd since it was clear that neither of them had jobs but we ignored the inconsistency and smoked our joint. This oversight would later come back to haunt us.

We could tell that the night was nearly over when Dan fell asleep in his chair. Almost on cue Tammy began cleaning up all the empty beer cans and putting away the food. As she was preparing our beds Dan opened his eyes and explained that we had just learned another invaluable life lesson; if you pretend to fall asleep, Tammy will clean the house for you.

The following morning we woke up early to watch the sunrise while Tammy prepared a delicious 30-item egg scramble. When we asked what exactly was in it Dan replied, “do you ask the Colonel what’s in his chicken?” Although this was around the thirtieth time he had used this phrase in the past two days, it was the first and only time that it even remotely made sense. The rest of the morning Dan went over his road atlas with us and instructed us what we needed to see in the southwest. Even though we spent less than two days with Cap’n Dan and the Tamster they formally adopted us and made us promise to return. Knowing that I finally had a family who wouldn’t tell me that “mushroom enthusiast is not a real job” and “we don’t care if Corey was kicked out by his Grandparents he can’t do drugs in our basement” we set out, giant tire bubble still intact, towards Sedona, AZ, in Dan’s opinion, the most beautiful place in America*.

(The whole family)

*We are incapable of creating an asterix-less post.

-Spencer