Our nine-hour drive to Roseau took s through the lovely flat desolation of North Dakota and two pounds of beef jerky. At 9:30 p.m. we reach the holiday station at Roseau to fill up the tank and get another pound of beef jerky. Did you know that fuel pumps have a safety mechanism that breaks the fuel hose from the pump handle in case some dumb hick drives off with the pump handle still in his car? Well they do. And we were just the dumb hicks to test it out. Oops.

    From there we drove another 30 miles to Warroad, MN where our motel was located. Warroad is the home of Marvin Windows, whose headquarters, by the way, has no windows. To call our motel a flea bag would be an insult to flea bag motels. This place was deadly. Super 8? “Super” wouldn’t be the word I’d use, but ok.

    We dropped off our bags and went in search of a cold beer. The first bar we hit was The Patch, conveniently located next door to the motel. One beer and one too many hick white guys listening to rap songs later we decided to look for the main street bars. We found one that was actually pretty good and ate their special frozen pizza for dinner. Finally, some soul.

    The vibe of the bar led us to some good conversation about the state of public education, specifically the loss of music and arts because they think calculus is more important. How about classes on “Being an American?” That's the class I've been wanting since this country started to unravel. I mean we teach kids it's so important to know the drag coefficient of a marble, but we're not teaching them about the importance of freedom and the rules and personal responsibility that comes with living in a free society? Like taxes and voting and social service and laws and being an informed citizen and so on.

    Anyway, the vibe was unfortunately short lived, as we had to get back to the Motel 666 for about four hours sleep so we could wake up around seven to meet our client.

    We stopped at a cafe in Roseau for breakfast in the morning. The Guest House. We sat at the counter. There were only a couple of people in the place including a guy drinking Mountain Dew who looked exceptionally unsavory and suspicious. I picked up the local paper, and when I say “paper” I mean that quite literally. It was a double-sided black and white Xerox printed on a single piece of colored paper (for added classiness!) It contained a few news tidbits – “Andrew Scrugal, Jr. has been named manager of the Ben Franklin five-and-dime by owner Andrew Scrugal, Sr. “Way to go Andy! Now you can buy me that beer you owe me.” But it’s most read sections, I suspect, were the “Joke of the Day” and “This Day in History” sections. Advertising for the local businesses surrounded all these informative articles. Which begs the question, does the only hardware store in town really need to advertise?

    We ordered our eggs and toast and drank our patently-weak diner coffee and after a while two old couples took a booth near us. One of the guys was wearing a World War II veteran cap. His wife aged not so well. She was an 80 year old woman who looked like a 70 year old man. Even her voice was raspy and manly. I think people who lived through WWII should get to live for free for the rest of their lives. I mean these people really sacrificed. I’m sure this old guy saw some shit in the war that no one should ever have to see. I wanted to shake his hand and thank him for his service, but I didn’t have the balls. I'm such a pussy for not doing it. I'm sure it would have made for an interesting story. Oh, well. You knew this town was just boring when the old manlady says with real interest, "What's the gas in Fergus?" Yikes. That's the best conversation they’ve got in Roseau.

    We met our client at a sports bar where the ATV convention was congregating and the Governor was broadcasting his weekly radio show. It was sickening listening to the partisan swill this cheese bag was pawning off as real balanced inquisitiveness. He even had his minions in the crowd prescreening audience questions. God forbid he had to answer a question on his own without knowing the right-wing approved answer. At one point he asked a guest pollster if he thinks John Kerry voting for the war and then against the money to fund it will affect his campaign. He says this as if it’s a fact. Later someone in the audience asked him what makes him most frustrated as Governor. And he has the nerve to sit there and say it frustrates him that the media never tells the whole story. Jesus. This after he just did the same thing. John Kerry did not vote for the war. That’s wrong information. And that he didn’t vote for the money is only half of the story and Tim Pawlently knows it. Hypocrite.

    We left the sports bar and headed out to this state forest for a VIP ATV ride with the Governor. We were there to learn about ATV riding, proper trail use and safety. We had never ridden an ATV in our lives. What we learned is that ATV riding is lame and that ATV riders – even the ones who were in charge of this safety campaign – are about as interested in proper trail use and safety as they are about the Russian Ballet.

    Calling ATV riding a sport is like calling Pro Wrestling real. You exert as much energy riding an ATV as you do changing channels on your television – the accelerator on an ATV is, literally, a button. The vehicle is a glorified Lark. To say that you ride ATV because you enjoy the great outdoors is a lie. When you’re riding one of these things you’re about as engaged in nature as you are when you’re watching “Survivor.” As a matter of fact, the entire idea of an ATV is minimize Mother Nature’s annoyances…

    “Love nature, but don’t want to walk those pesky wooded trails with all their craggy rocks and sweat-inducing hills? Want to be outdoors, but annoyed by the sounds of birds and babbling brooks? Yearn to shoot a deer without ever having to get off your fat ass? Try ATV’s! The sport of champions!!!”

    And as lazy as the machines are, the attitude of the riders is even lazier. They seem to have no direction or sense of urgency. Even those who are promoting the “sport.” We were specifically on this mind-fuck of a trip so we could ride and experience the machines. Yet we had to bribe some random guy to use his personal machines and our pre-ride safety lesson essentially consisted of, “Press this button to go, and pull this lever to stop.” We waited around for twenty minutes for someone to tell us what we were supposed to do or when we were riding or anything, frankly. But they just stood around in their florescent, splatter-painted ATV riding getups smoking and spitting. Then out of nowhere everyone took off. We hopped on our borrowed machines and attempted to catch up, but they were gone. So we ended up lost in the middle of nowhere on machines we had no idea how to ride. Great.

    At one point we caught up to the Governor’s ride where, rather than being greeted with looks of relief and “Thank God you’re okay. We were worried about you,” we were greeted with “Dude, you can’t be here man.” Trust me, dude, I don’t want to be here. Apparently (surprise) no one had informed anyone about who we were or what we were doing. Meanwhile the Governor was in the background eating a bologna sandwich. Strange world.

    Anyway we managed to find our way out of the forest and dropped off our borrowed ATV’s. The guy who was nice enough to lend them to us had told us earlier to try not to let our boots touch the fenders because they might leave a mark. As I stood there looking at them, I could only imagine his reaction

when he got back and saw them now, dripping wet and caked in mud. Priceless.

    We had to go to Northwest Minnesota for an All Terrain Vehicle convention because we're doing an ad campaign to keep ATV riders on designated trails rather than tromping all over the woods, urinating Busch Beer wherever it pleases them. I say we had to go to Northwestern Minnesota because there was not one iota of my being that wanted to go to Northwest Minnesota, especially not in this manner.

    Roseau, the town we were to meet these morons in, is nine hours from the Twin Cities. Our mission: Drive nine hours to Roseau; spend the night in a rat-hole motel that still advertises the fact that they have phones in every room as though they just installed electricity last week; wake up at an ungodly hour to watch Governor Tim Pawlenty ride an ATV; then leave at noon that day for the nine hour drive back to the Twin Cities. That works out to a total of 32 hours away – 18 hours in a car and 14 hours split between lying in a sperm-riddled motel bed and losing brain cells dealing with small minds (Tim Pawlenty) and small penises (ATV riders).

Scenes of the lovely hotel room we called home.

A stop at the “Gas-Food” for beef jerky chunks, Ritz crackers and a CAN of cheese. Put them all together and you have yourself a cheeseburger, the culinary highlight of our trip.

The “Guest House Restaurant. Finally, some small town soul.

Gotta love the old main street Ben Franklin stores. Made me wonder how long they could make it before a Walmart would win out and they’d have to close their doors. There aren’t many of these left.

Mountains of Mountain Dew for this guy

How much is gas in Fergus?... Who cares?

This has got to be the highlight of this guys year.

Safety first! Just don’t let Smokey there see the 12 pack of beer you’re hauling on that 4-wheeler.

Miles & miles of this: Nothing.

Words:Mike. Pictures:Robb.