Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

I just enjoyed Arby’s at a Love’s truck stop/gas station all-in-one extravaganza in Cameron, Missouri. They even have electric RV spots at this Love’s—5 of them, for around $40 a night. Not more than 5 miles away is a state park, so I don’t know why you’d choose to stay here, and yet there are 3 RVs parked in the electric Love’s spots. I’m in a free spot, turning in at 10 p.m. because I’m tired and I’ve caught a cold.

In the Love’s parking lot, a guy pulling a trailer with Minnesota plates excitedly came over to talk to me about the potential for one foot of snow in Minneapolis tomorrow, on March 31. It’s the winter that won’t end, and unfortunately, I’m going to catch the tail end of it.

I haven’t slept in the camper since March 16, and sitting here now, it feels like my little home. I have honestly missed it, and I’m excited to be in it again, even if it’s at a Love’s gas station in Missouri. I daresay my camper and I are falling in Love’s.  

When I got to here, after eating at the attached Arby’s, I went to the Love’s bathroom and took a poop. I’ve been pooping (and showering) in mostly public restrooms since I began this trip on Jan. 26. Some people are not okay with pooping at public restrooms. I have several friends who absolutely refuse to do it. I don’t go out of my way to poop in a public restroom, but if I have to go, I go. But I’m also pretty clean about it.

Here is my tried and true pooping at a public restroom method:

1. Wipe the toilet seat with a little bit of toilet paper to get rid of any obvious debris
2. Always carry a container of hand sanitizer. After wiping the seat, drop a bunch of dollops of sanitizer (9 or so, evenly spaced) on the seat, then wipe it all over the seat with toilet paper
3. Wipe up the hand sanitizer with another bunch of toilet paper
4. Now lay down 4 strips of toilet paper: one for each cheek on the sides of the toilet (obviously), one in the back, and one in the front. You essentially make a rectangle, so that you are fully insulated from potential grossness
5. Enjoy your poop

The things I’ve seen (not to mention the quantity) in a public men’s restroom are truly mind-boggling. But I know for a fact that some men will walk into the toilet stall, sit down on whatever is there, and start pooping. These men at the very least probably sit on pee and just don’t care. You can both hear their activity (or lack thereof), and see how their feet move under the stall, and from those clues you can deduce what kind of sanitary effort they’re putting into pooping in public. I’d say about half of guys just don’t care, and half seem to at least use the toilet paper method, though whether four sheets to make a rectangle are used, or only two, I can’t say.

One time when I was 19, I worked an overnight shift at a factory that made Dryell dryer pads. One day the health department came in and said no one was to use a particular bathroom, because they had found crabs on the toilet seat. Everyone was to pay attention to your pubic region to see if you had potentially gotten crabs from a toilet seat, and ever since then, I just don’t mess around. 

Also, we all knew it was this guy from Louisiana who was super dirty and who once said on break when we were smoking, “I believe in black magic, and white magic.” At the time, I burst out laughing uncontrollably. I felt bad, but I am pretty sure now that he was relying on one or the other magics to keep the crabs away, and that stuff is a lot of hooey. Science is better, and steps 1-5 above are pretty rigorous science, if you asked me.

Today I drove about 350 miles. I have 400 to go to finish up tomorrow. The storm rolls in at around 7 p.m., and I hope to beat it.