First Impressions

After a slightly strange night’s sleep at the Foothills Inn I wake up at 5.30am and can’t turn my brain off so i skype and send emails and peer outside at the snowy tundra of Rapid City outskirts. 

At 8 i head over to Wal-Mart and wander round endless aisles of stuff. Nothing comes in small packages, so i buy a huge shampoo and a king-size toothpaste. As I choose the toothpaste there is a TV nearby blaring out a seemingly endless looping ad for Dogzilla chicken flavoured dog toys. Scary.

I leave Wal-Mart feeling slightly grubby (compounded later by the motel receptionist who tells me she doesn’t shop there “because they use child labour”) and head to Perkins Family Restaurant for pancakes and syrup and all that stuff i would never normally eat for breakfast but somehow seems right surrounded by doughy-faced parents feeding up their dough-kids on a saturday morning.

Josh arrives at 11 in a hired convertible. He’s been here for a week already filming with Richard and his daughter and staying with them out at Richard’s ‘Portable Ranch House’. He seems relieved the second unit has arrived. Richard is stocking up on supplies at a huge outlet called Sam’s Club so we use the time to trade the hire car in for something more practical.

When we get to Sam’s Club Josh and I request an audience with the manager to check we can film, and it turns out Richard and ‘Dale’ have already had words, and it’s all good. Try that in ASDA in Weston-Super-Mare.

I meet Richard for the first time at the checkout. He’s got a trolley piled high with meat and cheese, with a token bag of peppers thrown in for colour. He’s wearing a hat with a feather in and gives me a warm handshake and a big smile. We’ve spoken on the phone, but never actually met before. We’re going to be spending the next six weeks together on this journey so it’s fairly important that we get along.

As we film him leaving Richard keeps bumping in to people he knows. One guy - Frank - sporting a Vietnam Vet baseball cap (66-68 apparently) looks like he’s seen some action. Then Richard runs in to ‘D’ who he’s been trying to track down for a while, and they agree to do some work together the following day which we can film.

There’s so much protein in the trunk the car is wheezing on its axles. We trade it in again for some more space and get a beaten up old Buick then head to church for confession. The heater is broken so it’s full blast or nothing. Richard gets a load off his mind inside with the Father and we take off to drop the shopping at his place.

The PRH is out in the sticks. There’s an ancient truck with a huge plastic vat on the back which is how Richard gets water out here. It has no brakes or lights. Josh picks up his stuff, and we head in to Spearfish to find a motel.

Molly on the front desk of the Best Western wins us over. There’s a hunting show on the TV in our room. A breathless, camouflaged, man-of-the-forest is gushing after killing a deer with a high powered bow and arrow “If i got any more excited I think i’d explode!” he exclaims as he strokes the antlers of the unfortunate recently deceased beast.

By the time we’ve unpacked and sorted out the kit we’re both knackered so after a couple of beers it’s bedtime.