So apparently, smaller creatures just like to fuck with me in the forest, I guess I'm certainly no Snow White.
I was woken up at about 5:30 this morning by some strange noises and a lot of rustling right outside the tent. I grabbed my knife and flashlight and opened the window to take a peek.
It would seem I had forgotten to properly close our brew bag which sat right outside the tent door.
Feasting in a pile of sugar, coffee, chocolate powder and coffee-mate, were three fucking large Raccoons. I don't exaggerate their size. They must have been nearly 2 feet long with asses any ghetto girl would be proud of.
I sat shining the light on them and watching in amazement as they munched away at all the contents of the bag. Just my luck.
I got up and opened the tent door. They didn't move, just kept on munching.
I hissed and waved my arms about.
One ran away into the bushes, followed quickly by another with the coffee-mate bag tightly gripped in his teeth.
The third one sat in a pile of instant coffee granules, with chocolate all over his paws, and stared at me, not budging.
I hissed and waved my arms again. He stood his ground.
I looked around the campsite, shrugged, and then booted the fat bastard as hard as I could.
It was a kick worthy of a winning field goal punt. He flew in a perfect arc and crashed into the bushes.
I smiled, job done, then got back in the tent to try and get some more sleep before daylight.
When I woke in the morning I went outside to survey the damage.
Strewn across the floor was the entire contents of the brew bag: cider packets and coffee filters littered the floor, a damp pile of sugar with a scuff mark from my boot and empty, torn open sandwich bags. There was a trail of coffee-mate from the tent, round the table and fire pit, and off into the bushes; and chocolate paw prints on everything. We had tied a trash bag to the top of a post, the bottom of the bag was torn open and there were chocolate paw prints up the side of the post. In fact there were chocolate paw prints on pretty much everything we had left out that night, leaving a trail of destruction you could follow round the campsite.
It took me nearly an hour to clean up the mess they had left, and to top it all, I didn't even find a dead or injured Raccoon in the bushes.
I miss the Chipmunks!
Oct 22, 2009
Oct 17, 2009
The Big Easy
Finally we drive into New Orleans, which is amazing! Even though I'm in pretty bad shape we go downtown to Mother's to eat Cajun food for lunch. Alex had a Po Boy sandwich and I had some Jumbalaya. It is SO good but my appetite is gone and I can't eat much more than a few bites. After that we decide to wander into the French Quarter to have a few drinks before we go back to the motel. On every block in the Quarter there are at least three houses for sale. Most of the stores that aren't on Bourbon Street are closed down. We did get to go into the Voodoo Store and Museum while we were there and we got a drink at LaFite's Blacksmith Shop, a blacksmith shop that was turned into a bar in the 1700's and where vampires have been known to drink.
The next day we wake up and plan our day. We're going to get doughnuts at Cafe Du Monde, then walk to St Louis I Cemetery and see the Voodoo Queen's grave, then go to the Garden District to see its layout and houses, then go to Bourbon Street for drinks, then go on the Vampire Tour, then go get more drinks on Bourbon Street.
When we get to Jackson Square it is filled with people reading Tarot cards. There is even an older man and lady playing music. The Cafe has a line around the block for doughnuts and Alex doesn't want to wait in the line so we start walking toward the cemetery. On the way we find Community Coffee House where we both get coffees to go and I get a bagel to eat because I'm hungry. While eating I see a nightlife magazine and pick it up because it has a list of all the best bars in town.
Coffees in hand, we walk to the cemetery. It is falling apart. Even the graves that have been restored are just plastered over with stucco. I felt strange as I walked through all the above ground tombs, brick piles falling apart. At one time while I was in the protestant section I heard a woman screaming to her boyfriend in an apartment not 200 feet from the edge of the cemetery. There was rap music playing. I thought, what a contrast. Nevertheless I was excited to find out that the architect of the Capitol building in Washington DC was buried there with his son. And Plessy of Plessy v. Furgeson was buried there too. He was the man who in about 1900 defied the separate but equal laws on the trains and sat in the white section only to be imprisoned. At the time the supreme court upheld the laws but reversed it in Brown v. The Board of Education.
After the cemetary we walk down to Bourbon street and get drinks at the Olde Absinthe Bar. After this we check out the Garden District only to find that not much is going on. The houses are beautiful to see though and there are so many trees! When we return to Bourbon Street we go back to the Absinthe Bar and have a few beers, spending the rest of our cash. After the beers we go back to the hotel and make some dinner only to return in an hour for our Vampire tour.
When we get to the tour there are probably 75 people waiting, so they split us up into three groups. Our guide's name is Louis and he's a fourth generation New Orleanser. He tells us great stories about vampires in the French Quarter and I love walking through those streets at night. There are gas lanterns still glowing outside of houses and you can see inside the huge windows into the parlors of the old houses. The yellow light reflects off flowers and vines growing on black fences, and drunken people stumble down the street singing songs. At the end of the tour Alex has written down some things for us to look up online and we're both feeling better and happy to have come to New Orleans at last.
The next day we wake up and plan our day. We're going to get doughnuts at Cafe Du Monde, then walk to St Louis I Cemetery and see the Voodoo Queen's grave, then go to the Garden District to see its layout and houses, then go to Bourbon Street for drinks, then go on the Vampire Tour, then go get more drinks on Bourbon Street.
When we get to Jackson Square it is filled with people reading Tarot cards. There is even an older man and lady playing music. The Cafe has a line around the block for doughnuts and Alex doesn't want to wait in the line so we start walking toward the cemetery. On the way we find Community Coffee House where we both get coffees to go and I get a bagel to eat because I'm hungry. While eating I see a nightlife magazine and pick it up because it has a list of all the best bars in town.
Coffees in hand, we walk to the cemetery. It is falling apart. Even the graves that have been restored are just plastered over with stucco. I felt strange as I walked through all the above ground tombs, brick piles falling apart. At one time while I was in the protestant section I heard a woman screaming to her boyfriend in an apartment not 200 feet from the edge of the cemetery. There was rap music playing. I thought, what a contrast. Nevertheless I was excited to find out that the architect of the Capitol building in Washington DC was buried there with his son. And Plessy of Plessy v. Furgeson was buried there too. He was the man who in about 1900 defied the separate but equal laws on the trains and sat in the white section only to be imprisoned. At the time the supreme court upheld the laws but reversed it in Brown v. The Board of Education.
After the cemetary we walk down to Bourbon street and get drinks at the Olde Absinthe Bar. After this we check out the Garden District only to find that not much is going on. The houses are beautiful to see though and there are so many trees! When we return to Bourbon Street we go back to the Absinthe Bar and have a few beers, spending the rest of our cash. After the beers we go back to the hotel and make some dinner only to return in an hour for our Vampire tour.
When we get to the tour there are probably 75 people waiting, so they split us up into three groups. Our guide's name is Louis and he's a fourth generation New Orleanser. He tells us great stories about vampires in the French Quarter and I love walking through those streets at night. There are gas lanterns still glowing outside of houses and you can see inside the huge windows into the parlors of the old houses. The yellow light reflects off flowers and vines growing on black fences, and drunken people stumble down the street singing songs. At the end of the tour Alex has written down some things for us to look up online and we're both feeling better and happy to have come to New Orleans at last.
Oct 15, 2009
One Giant Long Motherfucking Drive
So, it started on Wednesday in Montana.
It was snowing, lovely sleet snow. I was sick, really fucking sick. Candice drove the ENTIRE width of Montana in sleet snow that day, but we made it across the border into Wyoming. Unfortunately, that left us in 32 degree snow, but we had factored this and had planned to get a motel room. No point being sick and cold at the same time. We bathed that night, just beautiful.
The next day, Candice drove again, all the way to Nebraska, across the corner of Wyoming.
Wyoming, even though the weather was disgusting, is a pretty dismal place. Temperature wasn't much better when we got there, still snow, still cold. But, we managed to stay in a really seedy motel that had a nice collection of drunks scattered around, and what I think was a crack den in the next room. Oh, and I was still sick, getting worse, and finding it hard to do anything and breath at the same time. So much fun.
Friday, even though I was sick and unable to breath and move, I decided I could drive, so we split the driving through Nebraska. Thank fuck for that. Candice told me her dad had driven through Nebraska and never, ever wanted to do it again.
I share his feelings on this matter.
I NEVER, EVER want to have to visit Nebraska again, let alone drive any part of it. It's flat, depressing and boring. So much so that there was not one bumper sticker in the TWO State Parks, or any gas station we stopped at. Apparently, even Nebraskans think their State isn't worth celebrating on the back of a car.
Once into Kansas, it was getting late and we needed to get to a campground. This achieved, I started to set up the tent. It took me 10 mins to get two tent pegs in as I just couldn't catch my breath. Candice had to help me finish putting the tent up! She made up Chicken Noodle soup, I was hungry but I didn't have any appetite. Four spoonfuls and I was done. I looked at my phone and this was when we realized we would be in for a long night.
Wunderground said the temperature was going to get down to about 25, with winds up to 25 m.p.h; oh, and freezing rain in the morning.
We went to bed at 5 pm knowing it was going to be rough. And it was. I got half hour naps here and there, huddled under all the blankets with Treacle, constantly worried the tent was about to tear off the top of us! When we woke in the morning there was a sheet, yes a sheet, of ice covering the whole tent, and it was seriously fucking cold.
I was a mess and couldn't even help her put down the tent, I just had to sit in the car as it warmed up, trying to catch my breath. We then just started driving again and made it through to Missouri, and warmer temperatures.
We stayed at this massive campsite, filled to the brim with giant RV's. Even thought we were exhausted, and needed the rest, we could only stay one night there because they were booked up for the weekend. We decided to hit up Branson, and then camp just over the state line in The Ozarks, Arkansas.
"Just over the state line" ended up being a three hour drive through The Ozarks, but we eventually found a campsite in a forest on the top of one of the hills in the mountain range. It was great until we couldn't light a fire because all the wood around was wet from the previous week of rain, and then the next installment dumped on us. We spent the next 36 hours in the tent, in varying degrees of rainfall, but we needed to not be driving. By the second night, everything in the tent was wet, sorry, soaked. We sat reading, I read Bill Clinton's autobiography, which worked out handy the next day! By 7 in the morning we were done and just threw everything in the car and headed to Little Rock.
In Little Rock is the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. A seriously Fucking Awesome place!
I can't explain here how great this place is but I URGE you to take time out of your life to go there. (Those of you who know me know that I don't say that about very many places at all.) It is an experience that person should have. They have his Mustang and Presidential Limo, correspondents between him and many famous peeps, and a recreation of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room! When you look at how much he achieved in those eight years, it's truly humbling, and gives hope for the next eight years.
We dried all our stuff at a laundromat and stayed at a motel in Hot Springs, childhood home of Bill Clinton.
Hot Springs is run by the National Park Service. It's a strip along the street that contains the bathhouses that used to operate there. They were more like old school spas that catered to rich people wanting to fix their ailments. One of them has been restored to look like it did at the peak in the twenties and is a museum you can wander around. It's interesting to get a snap shot of life at a different time.
Although it was a pretty warm day, it was not going to last and we were completely done with the weather by now and decided to head to New Orleans, and bizarrely the quickest way was back up through Memphis and then straight down. So off to Memphis we drove.
We stopped there for a drink on Beale St and talked to a bartender who told us a few things we should see in New Orleans then it was back on the road again. The weather report said it was going to rain, again, pretty much all night, so being limited on funds and tired of getting soaked, we slept in the car and a State fishing reserve. Not the most comfortable nights sleep, but we were dry when we woke up. Funny enough, so was everything outside, it hadn't rained at all. Fucking figures! I got out the car to make us some coffee on the burner in the crisp, cloudy morning air. The water was just about to boil, when everything around me went completely silent and then I heard a hiss getting increasingly louder. "Oh no," I thought.
Yep, you guessed it. The heavens opened and ten tons of rain dumped on me. I ran under a tree, and that didn't help at all. A minute later it was over, I was wet, and it was another great start to the day.
If we weren't done before, we certainly were now. Candice was getting sicker, I was getting better, and we had both had enough of the God damn world.
After finding a State Park in Louisiana, we drove on, preparing ourselves for another happy night in the tent. We made it to Tickfaw State Park, dealt with the retard at the front desk and paid $15 for a campsite in the middle of a swamp.
I know that I am prone to exaggeration, but unfortunately, I'm not this time.
The guy at the front desk was really simple, let me recount the story:
We pull at the office and I wind down the window as he opens his window.
"Yes?" he asks.
"I want a campsite for the night," I reply.
"Tent?" he says inaudibly.
"What?" I need him to repeat.
"Tent?" he says again.
"Yes," I reply, looking out behind the car to make sure I haven't been dragging someone else's RV across two states.
"OK," he gives me a look like I'm seriously insane, asks for I.D. and then stares at his computer screen with a look of confusion and constipation. "Have you been here before?"
"Nope."
He sighs, not the answer he wanted, "Would you like to be near the bathrooms or... not?"
"Near would be fine," I answer.
Lots of sighing, clicking and constipated looks follow. "Here's a map, and the gate combination."
I was slightly confused as to why I needed a combination to a gate I had already entered through, but I didn't want to trouble his already overloaded, simple brain with the question, and so on we drove to find our campsite.
It tuns out that the campsites are in the middle of a swamp and arranged in a circle, so technically everyone of them is close to the bathrooms. When I say swamp, I really mean swamp. I could stand by the tent and spit into the middle of the swamp. The swamp had been fitted with overflow pipes to keep the water level down, very handy, but the overflows poured right into the campsites. There was a small square sand box for us to put the tent on and everything else all around us was stagnant swamp, filled with mosquitoes. They weren't west coast mosquitoes, you know the small annoying ones that buzz around you head and occasionally bite you. These were mother fucking giant African mosquitoes, the size of thumbnails, that given the chance would suck every ounce of blood out of you, and they try to!
The campsite we had been designated was just too damn swampy for us to even put a tent on, so we moved to the next site along. Whilst getting some stuff together, the guy from the front desk dove by us and I flagging him down. He looked confused and in pain even before I had said anything. I told him that the site was way too swampy and that we had moved over one site. He looked at the two sites, got even more confused, and then informed me that I had to go to the front desk and tell them we had moved. I figured that this was only because his little brain would explode if he had to try to retain this small piece of information for more than a few seconds.
Fine. I got in the car and drove back round to the front desk. No sooner had I walked in through the door a chubby blonde girl screamed at me.
"Can I help you?!"
"Yes. I'm staying in site 32, and I've moved next door to site 34. I'm just letting you know."
A look of pure disgust covered her face, "You just can't do that. Let me see if it's free."
Baring in mind that we were the ONLY people staying in the campsite, I didn't foresee this being a problem, but you never know when dealing with such simple people.
She clicked away at her computer and without even turning round to face me said, "36 is taken."
"Excuse me?" now I was confused.
She sighed, they must get training in sighing here. "You're in 34 and want to move to 36. 36 is taken."
Did this really have to be this hard?
My turn to sigh, "No. We're in 32 and want to move to 34."
"Oh," more sighing, "I didn't understand you. That should be O.K., but don't do it again."
On any normal day I would have happily spent the next 20 mins berating her on her stupidity, but luckily for her, I just wasn't in the mood. I just left and headed back to the tent.
Candice is really sick, I knew how she felt, I'd been there a few days earlier. She just crawled up in a ball in the tent whilst I made beef stew for dinner, and the mosquitoes feasted on flesh. By this time it had got dark and I looked up to see half the sky periodically lit up with the impending thunderstorms. It looked beautiful, but I knew we were going to be in for another rough night. Tired of being dinner for another life form, I climbed into the tent and started to write this blog entry. I managed to get to Arkansas before i had to stop. There was a lot of clattering going on on the table where I had left our dinner bowls.
I wasn't aware of the wildlife situation in Louisiana, and didn't know what was outside finishing off our stew. I got my boots on, grabbed my axe and flashlight, and looked outside. Thankfully it was only a racoon munching away on the beef Candice hadn't eaten. I shooed him away, stuck the bowls in the car and headed back to the tent, but I had lost my inspiration to continue writing.
I don't know what time the thunderstorm got to us, but it just lit up the sky and dropped bucket loads on us for hours. Within no time at all everything in the tent was wet, yet again. We huddled together on the only dry part and tried to sleep. When morning came everything was again soaked through, but there was a laundry room by the bathrooms which allowed us to dry it all out, once Candice had driven miles out of camp to get change because they didn't have any at the front desk. Fucking retards.
This done we packed up and headed to New Orleans and a few nights in a hotel. Typically the weather was now getting better.
It was snowing, lovely sleet snow. I was sick, really fucking sick. Candice drove the ENTIRE width of Montana in sleet snow that day, but we made it across the border into Wyoming. Unfortunately, that left us in 32 degree snow, but we had factored this and had planned to get a motel room. No point being sick and cold at the same time. We bathed that night, just beautiful.
The next day, Candice drove again, all the way to Nebraska, across the corner of Wyoming.
Wyoming, even though the weather was disgusting, is a pretty dismal place. Temperature wasn't much better when we got there, still snow, still cold. But, we managed to stay in a really seedy motel that had a nice collection of drunks scattered around, and what I think was a crack den in the next room. Oh, and I was still sick, getting worse, and finding it hard to do anything and breath at the same time. So much fun.
Friday, even though I was sick and unable to breath and move, I decided I could drive, so we split the driving through Nebraska. Thank fuck for that. Candice told me her dad had driven through Nebraska and never, ever wanted to do it again.
I share his feelings on this matter.
I NEVER, EVER want to have to visit Nebraska again, let alone drive any part of it. It's flat, depressing and boring. So much so that there was not one bumper sticker in the TWO State Parks, or any gas station we stopped at. Apparently, even Nebraskans think their State isn't worth celebrating on the back of a car.
Once into Kansas, it was getting late and we needed to get to a campground. This achieved, I started to set up the tent. It took me 10 mins to get two tent pegs in as I just couldn't catch my breath. Candice had to help me finish putting the tent up! She made up Chicken Noodle soup, I was hungry but I didn't have any appetite. Four spoonfuls and I was done. I looked at my phone and this was when we realized we would be in for a long night.
Wunderground said the temperature was going to get down to about 25, with winds up to 25 m.p.h; oh, and freezing rain in the morning.
We went to bed at 5 pm knowing it was going to be rough. And it was. I got half hour naps here and there, huddled under all the blankets with Treacle, constantly worried the tent was about to tear off the top of us! When we woke in the morning there was a sheet, yes a sheet, of ice covering the whole tent, and it was seriously fucking cold.
I was a mess and couldn't even help her put down the tent, I just had to sit in the car as it warmed up, trying to catch my breath. We then just started driving again and made it through to Missouri, and warmer temperatures.
We stayed at this massive campsite, filled to the brim with giant RV's. Even thought we were exhausted, and needed the rest, we could only stay one night there because they were booked up for the weekend. We decided to hit up Branson, and then camp just over the state line in The Ozarks, Arkansas.
"Just over the state line" ended up being a three hour drive through The Ozarks, but we eventually found a campsite in a forest on the top of one of the hills in the mountain range. It was great until we couldn't light a fire because all the wood around was wet from the previous week of rain, and then the next installment dumped on us. We spent the next 36 hours in the tent, in varying degrees of rainfall, but we needed to not be driving. By the second night, everything in the tent was wet, sorry, soaked. We sat reading, I read Bill Clinton's autobiography, which worked out handy the next day! By 7 in the morning we were done and just threw everything in the car and headed to Little Rock.
In Little Rock is the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. A seriously Fucking Awesome place!
I can't explain here how great this place is but I URGE you to take time out of your life to go there. (Those of you who know me know that I don't say that about very many places at all.) It is an experience that person should have. They have his Mustang and Presidential Limo, correspondents between him and many famous peeps, and a recreation of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room! When you look at how much he achieved in those eight years, it's truly humbling, and gives hope for the next eight years.
We dried all our stuff at a laundromat and stayed at a motel in Hot Springs, childhood home of Bill Clinton.
Hot Springs is run by the National Park Service. It's a strip along the street that contains the bathhouses that used to operate there. They were more like old school spas that catered to rich people wanting to fix their ailments. One of them has been restored to look like it did at the peak in the twenties and is a museum you can wander around. It's interesting to get a snap shot of life at a different time.
Although it was a pretty warm day, it was not going to last and we were completely done with the weather by now and decided to head to New Orleans, and bizarrely the quickest way was back up through Memphis and then straight down. So off to Memphis we drove.
We stopped there for a drink on Beale St and talked to a bartender who told us a few things we should see in New Orleans then it was back on the road again. The weather report said it was going to rain, again, pretty much all night, so being limited on funds and tired of getting soaked, we slept in the car and a State fishing reserve. Not the most comfortable nights sleep, but we were dry when we woke up. Funny enough, so was everything outside, it hadn't rained at all. Fucking figures! I got out the car to make us some coffee on the burner in the crisp, cloudy morning air. The water was just about to boil, when everything around me went completely silent and then I heard a hiss getting increasingly louder. "Oh no," I thought.
Yep, you guessed it. The heavens opened and ten tons of rain dumped on me. I ran under a tree, and that didn't help at all. A minute later it was over, I was wet, and it was another great start to the day.
If we weren't done before, we certainly were now. Candice was getting sicker, I was getting better, and we had both had enough of the God damn world.
After finding a State Park in Louisiana, we drove on, preparing ourselves for another happy night in the tent. We made it to Tickfaw State Park, dealt with the retard at the front desk and paid $15 for a campsite in the middle of a swamp.
I know that I am prone to exaggeration, but unfortunately, I'm not this time.
The guy at the front desk was really simple, let me recount the story:
We pull at the office and I wind down the window as he opens his window.
"Yes?" he asks.
"I want a campsite for the night," I reply.
"Tent?" he says inaudibly.
"What?" I need him to repeat.
"Tent?" he says again.
"Yes," I reply, looking out behind the car to make sure I haven't been dragging someone else's RV across two states.
"OK," he gives me a look like I'm seriously insane, asks for I.D. and then stares at his computer screen with a look of confusion and constipation. "Have you been here before?"
"Nope."
He sighs, not the answer he wanted, "Would you like to be near the bathrooms or... not?"
"Near would be fine," I answer.
Lots of sighing, clicking and constipated looks follow. "Here's a map, and the gate combination."
I was slightly confused as to why I needed a combination to a gate I had already entered through, but I didn't want to trouble his already overloaded, simple brain with the question, and so on we drove to find our campsite.
It tuns out that the campsites are in the middle of a swamp and arranged in a circle, so technically everyone of them is close to the bathrooms. When I say swamp, I really mean swamp. I could stand by the tent and spit into the middle of the swamp. The swamp had been fitted with overflow pipes to keep the water level down, very handy, but the overflows poured right into the campsites. There was a small square sand box for us to put the tent on and everything else all around us was stagnant swamp, filled with mosquitoes. They weren't west coast mosquitoes, you know the small annoying ones that buzz around you head and occasionally bite you. These were mother fucking giant African mosquitoes, the size of thumbnails, that given the chance would suck every ounce of blood out of you, and they try to!
The campsite we had been designated was just too damn swampy for us to even put a tent on, so we moved to the next site along. Whilst getting some stuff together, the guy from the front desk dove by us and I flagging him down. He looked confused and in pain even before I had said anything. I told him that the site was way too swampy and that we had moved over one site. He looked at the two sites, got even more confused, and then informed me that I had to go to the front desk and tell them we had moved. I figured that this was only because his little brain would explode if he had to try to retain this small piece of information for more than a few seconds.
Fine. I got in the car and drove back round to the front desk. No sooner had I walked in through the door a chubby blonde girl screamed at me.
"Can I help you?!"
"Yes. I'm staying in site 32, and I've moved next door to site 34. I'm just letting you know."
A look of pure disgust covered her face, "You just can't do that. Let me see if it's free."
Baring in mind that we were the ONLY people staying in the campsite, I didn't foresee this being a problem, but you never know when dealing with such simple people.
She clicked away at her computer and without even turning round to face me said, "36 is taken."
"Excuse me?" now I was confused.
She sighed, they must get training in sighing here. "You're in 34 and want to move to 36. 36 is taken."
Did this really have to be this hard?
My turn to sigh, "No. We're in 32 and want to move to 34."
"Oh," more sighing, "I didn't understand you. That should be O.K., but don't do it again."
On any normal day I would have happily spent the next 20 mins berating her on her stupidity, but luckily for her, I just wasn't in the mood. I just left and headed back to the tent.
Candice is really sick, I knew how she felt, I'd been there a few days earlier. She just crawled up in a ball in the tent whilst I made beef stew for dinner, and the mosquitoes feasted on flesh. By this time it had got dark and I looked up to see half the sky periodically lit up with the impending thunderstorms. It looked beautiful, but I knew we were going to be in for another rough night. Tired of being dinner for another life form, I climbed into the tent and started to write this blog entry. I managed to get to Arkansas before i had to stop. There was a lot of clattering going on on the table where I had left our dinner bowls.
I wasn't aware of the wildlife situation in Louisiana, and didn't know what was outside finishing off our stew. I got my boots on, grabbed my axe and flashlight, and looked outside. Thankfully it was only a racoon munching away on the beef Candice hadn't eaten. I shooed him away, stuck the bowls in the car and headed back to the tent, but I had lost my inspiration to continue writing.
I don't know what time the thunderstorm got to us, but it just lit up the sky and dropped bucket loads on us for hours. Within no time at all everything in the tent was wet, yet again. We huddled together on the only dry part and tried to sleep. When morning came everything was again soaked through, but there was a laundry room by the bathrooms which allowed us to dry it all out, once Candice had driven miles out of camp to get change because they didn't have any at the front desk. Fucking retards.
This done we packed up and headed to New Orleans and a few nights in a hotel. Typically the weather was now getting better.
Oct 13, 2009
Into the South
We check out of the Hot Springs National Park in the morning after drying out some more of our stuff with the heater in our hotel room. Hot Springs National Park is a collection of Bath Houses along a street in a town in western Arkansas. I think there are 10 buildings, and the NPS has restored one of them to what it was like in the early 20th century when bathing was at its peak. People like Al Capone went to this bath house where men's and women's bathing was separate. The bath house had separate bathing stalls for everyone, a gym, changing rooms that included a vanity and a bed for resting, and separate deck spaces for men and women to enjoy the sun. At that time people went to bath houses to cure their physical ailments.
From there we went to Beale St. in Memphis, Tennessee and had a drink at a bar there. The bartender told us about Marie Leveau the Voodoo Queen and how we should go see her grave in New Orleans. He'd lived there when he was going to school. He also told us to check out these French doughnuts at Cafe du Monde in Jackson Square.
When we checked the weather we found that it was going to rain again and having almost no money, we couldn't get another hotel room. So we slept in the car in the parking lot of a State park while, as fate would have it, no rain poured down that night.
It did start pouring at about 8 in the morning though, so it's good we didn't set up the tent because everything would have been soaked in trying to get it to the car. From there in Northern Mississippi we travel south to Jackson and then take the Natchez Trace all the way to Natchez. On the way I finally get my Sausage McMuffin and it doesn't taste nearly as good in reality as it did in my head. The Natchez Trace is a very old trail that goes from Natchez (on the Mississippi in the South) to Kentucky in the North. Originally it was a native american trail used for herding bison, then when white people colonized the area and started growing crops, they would sail to Natchez with their goods, sell them and set off back home on the Trace. Once steamboats started going up the Mississippi people stopped using the Trace, but it was turned into a National Scenic Highway and there are plenty of interesting stops along the way. We stop at a waterfall, an old inn and plantation and a trail that goes through an old part of the trace (you can see how travelers wore it down into a small canyon, almost like an empty creek bed but about 3 times as deep).
That night we stop at the Tickfaw State Park in Arkansas where I'm feeling really bad and Alex is feeling okay and it rains so hard it soaks through all our bedding in 3 hours. During the first hour I can feel it on the edge of my sleeping bag. During the next hour I have to move off half the bag because it's soaked. The next hour I feel everything wet at my feet, puddles of water were accumulating. Then by the end of the fourth hour everything was wet again except a little high spot on Alex's side. I sit up and say, "why is your side always dry and mine is always soaked? It's not fair! I hate this fucking rain and this swamp!" Alex tells me to sleep where he's sleeping and takes my side of the tent. I say no at first but I'm feeling too bad to sleep in the wetness all night. Even sleeping there, my feet were wet all night and I had only a wet blanket to cover me. The next day I'm a bit delirious from not sleeping and from being sick and cold. I'm not making much sense and all my efforts to help just annoy Alex. We get all our stuff dry in the laundromat at the state park after I have to drive 10 miles to get change from a gas station for the laundry machines.
From there we went to Beale St. in Memphis, Tennessee and had a drink at a bar there. The bartender told us about Marie Leveau the Voodoo Queen and how we should go see her grave in New Orleans. He'd lived there when he was going to school. He also told us to check out these French doughnuts at Cafe du Monde in Jackson Square.
When we checked the weather we found that it was going to rain again and having almost no money, we couldn't get another hotel room. So we slept in the car in the parking lot of a State park while, as fate would have it, no rain poured down that night.
It did start pouring at about 8 in the morning though, so it's good we didn't set up the tent because everything would have been soaked in trying to get it to the car. From there in Northern Mississippi we travel south to Jackson and then take the Natchez Trace all the way to Natchez. On the way I finally get my Sausage McMuffin and it doesn't taste nearly as good in reality as it did in my head. The Natchez Trace is a very old trail that goes from Natchez (on the Mississippi in the South) to Kentucky in the North. Originally it was a native american trail used for herding bison, then when white people colonized the area and started growing crops, they would sail to Natchez with their goods, sell them and set off back home on the Trace. Once steamboats started going up the Mississippi people stopped using the Trace, but it was turned into a National Scenic Highway and there are plenty of interesting stops along the way. We stop at a waterfall, an old inn and plantation and a trail that goes through an old part of the trace (you can see how travelers wore it down into a small canyon, almost like an empty creek bed but about 3 times as deep).
That night we stop at the Tickfaw State Park in Arkansas where I'm feeling really bad and Alex is feeling okay and it rains so hard it soaks through all our bedding in 3 hours. During the first hour I can feel it on the edge of my sleeping bag. During the next hour I have to move off half the bag because it's soaked. The next hour I feel everything wet at my feet, puddles of water were accumulating. Then by the end of the fourth hour everything was wet again except a little high spot on Alex's side. I sit up and say, "why is your side always dry and mine is always soaked? It's not fair! I hate this fucking rain and this swamp!" Alex tells me to sleep where he's sleeping and takes my side of the tent. I say no at first but I'm feeling too bad to sleep in the wetness all night. Even sleeping there, my feet were wet all night and I had only a wet blanket to cover me. The next day I'm a bit delirious from not sleeping and from being sick and cold. I'm not making much sense and all my efforts to help just annoy Alex. We get all our stuff dry in the laundromat at the state park after I have to drive 10 miles to get change from a gas station for the laundry machines.
Oct 12, 2009
The Rusty Humpfrey Show
A few days ago, while we were in the Ozarks, I took out our wind-up radio and searched for something interesting to listen to. I landed on Mountain Dog Radio which was playing the Rusty Humpfrey Show. He started off his show by shaming all the other radio shows for their coverage of Columbus Day which he believe they paint in too negative a light, "I can't believe what you all are doing to Columbus. The man that started this great nation. It is because of him that we have anything at all." He went on to say that civilization is better than running around in deerskin. That there are better kinds of civilization and the West's is the best.
Next he went on to Global Warming, where he says, "IT DOESN'T EXIST!" Then he goes on to list a number of temperatures in the US, all amazingly cold for this time of year. Wyoming 29 degrees, Helena 9 degrees, Kansas 35 degrees, etc. "We've been in global cooling for three years. Now, Global Warming is great: more sun means longer growing seasons which leads to more food which lowers the cost of food, which leaves more expendable income. Now, global cooling now thats a real problem because it leads to shorter growing seasons, less food, higher prices and no disposable income because you've spent all your money on food and gas and housing."
Later, he had on Larry Klayman author of the book "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment". During the show this guy self-titled himself a legal revolutionary. He believes that, "the state of the United States during the 2008 election was similar to Germany before they elected Hitler". He said that, "We have a socialist in the whitehouse who's using us for his own pleasure." He also believes that we need to stage a Second American Revolution. That we need to take the government out of control and reinstate a new one. He has a website: freedomwatchusa.org.
Also, you can get the Rusty Humpfrey Show podcast for 10/12/09 if you'd like to listen to the show.
Next he went on to Global Warming, where he says, "IT DOESN'T EXIST!" Then he goes on to list a number of temperatures in the US, all amazingly cold for this time of year. Wyoming 29 degrees, Helena 9 degrees, Kansas 35 degrees, etc. "We've been in global cooling for three years. Now, Global Warming is great: more sun means longer growing seasons which leads to more food which lowers the cost of food, which leaves more expendable income. Now, global cooling now thats a real problem because it leads to shorter growing seasons, less food, higher prices and no disposable income because you've spent all your money on food and gas and housing."
Later, he had on Larry Klayman author of the book "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment". During the show this guy self-titled himself a legal revolutionary. He believes that, "the state of the United States during the 2008 election was similar to Germany before they elected Hitler". He said that, "We have a socialist in the whitehouse who's using us for his own pleasure." He also believes that we need to stage a Second American Revolution. That we need to take the government out of control and reinstate a new one. He has a website: freedomwatchusa.org.
Also, you can get the Rusty Humpfrey Show podcast for 10/12/09 if you'd like to listen to the show.
Oct 11, 2009
The Bill Clinton Land
The next morning we find out that the campsites are actually all booked for the weekend so we can't stay any more days there and have to move on. We decide to go to the Ozarks in Arkansas because they're close and we can see the showtown of Branson on the way.
It takes Alex 2 hours to drive to Branson, about 1 hour longer than we thought it would. When we get there we're not feeling good and we're getting dangerously short with each other about everything. When we're there I keep asking Alex what he wants to do and he doesn't give me an answer and asks me what I want to do but I don't give an answer because I don't know if he wants to do what I want to do and I don't want to hear him sighing at me. Plus I'm tired and sick and really just want to get in the car and find a place to camp for two days and rest. After checking out Old Downtown Branson, home of 200 theaters we head for the Ozarks. Alex drives for 3 hours into Arkansas before we get to a campsite in the Ozarks. This is about 2 hours longer than we though it would take. When we get to the campsite everything around us is wet. We're both exhausted and sick and can't go any further so we set up camp. Then we check the weather and find out that it's going to rain. As the sun is going down Alex tries to light a fire and as the small thing dwindles and dies in its infancy all hope leaves me and I fall into despair: everything we have is going to get wet, I can barely do anything because my body is so tired, the weather just won't let us be, we're running out of food, I'm fucking cold, in short everything is horrible. I totally break down in the tent and Alex consoles me, "It's not so bad, everything's going to be fine. We'll dry everything out. And we'll stay here for a couple days so we can rest." Bad idea us.
After the first night half of everything is wet. All day long it rains off and on but not nice rain. It's big droplets and the humidity is about 96% so everything is wet if it's outside. To cheer us up we read our books and play with the hamster. We let her run over everything in the tent and she makes us both feel a lot better. We make our food in the tent that night and after dinner we assess the wetness and listen to really really conservative radio. Since basically everything below our knees is wet we decide to use our one dry sleeping bag to cover our legs and use the damp comforter to cover our upper halves. This works pretty well until the rain starts dumping down in the middle of the night soaking everything under and around us except a little part of ground under Alex. I stay as long as I can in the tent but soon my knees and ankles start to ache from the wetness and the cold so I go to the car at about 3:00 AM. I can't go back to sleep after 7 so I listen to NPR to see what's happening in the world. Healthcare was the big issue that morning. At about 8:30 Alex starts toward the car with some things from the tent. I jump out and start helping him bring stuff in, everything is totally soaked. It is so wet outside that I take off my jacket and wear as little as possible because it's all getting drenched. We squeeze out as much water as we can from the stuff and throw it all in the car hoping to dry it at a laundry sometime soon.
From the Ozarks we head to Little Rock to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The library is huge and includes two of Clinton's cars plus recreations of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room. It also chronicles everything that he did during his presidency, which is just so much it's amazing, and it has letters between the president, first lady and many famous and interesting people. One of my favorites was from Mother Theresa to the First Lady. It was still pouring rain when we leave the library and go to a laundromat. At the laundromat I am being argumentative because I'm sick of this whole trip and Alex and I have a big fight over coffee. I know, coffee. We go get the damn coffee and then make up while the stuff is going through its second cycle. I'm being argumentative. You're being pessimistic. . . I'm sorry.
From there, since we know it's going to rain again, we pay for a hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas the boyhood home of Bill Clinton.
That night I'm feeling really sick and we find out that the quickest way to New Orleans is by going through Memphis, Tennessee.
It takes Alex 2 hours to drive to Branson, about 1 hour longer than we thought it would. When we get there we're not feeling good and we're getting dangerously short with each other about everything. When we're there I keep asking Alex what he wants to do and he doesn't give me an answer and asks me what I want to do but I don't give an answer because I don't know if he wants to do what I want to do and I don't want to hear him sighing at me. Plus I'm tired and sick and really just want to get in the car and find a place to camp for two days and rest. After checking out Old Downtown Branson, home of 200 theaters we head for the Ozarks. Alex drives for 3 hours into Arkansas before we get to a campsite in the Ozarks. This is about 2 hours longer than we though it would take. When we get to the campsite everything around us is wet. We're both exhausted and sick and can't go any further so we set up camp. Then we check the weather and find out that it's going to rain. As the sun is going down Alex tries to light a fire and as the small thing dwindles and dies in its infancy all hope leaves me and I fall into despair: everything we have is going to get wet, I can barely do anything because my body is so tired, the weather just won't let us be, we're running out of food, I'm fucking cold, in short everything is horrible. I totally break down in the tent and Alex consoles me, "It's not so bad, everything's going to be fine. We'll dry everything out. And we'll stay here for a couple days so we can rest." Bad idea us.
After the first night half of everything is wet. All day long it rains off and on but not nice rain. It's big droplets and the humidity is about 96% so everything is wet if it's outside. To cheer us up we read our books and play with the hamster. We let her run over everything in the tent and she makes us both feel a lot better. We make our food in the tent that night and after dinner we assess the wetness and listen to really really conservative radio. Since basically everything below our knees is wet we decide to use our one dry sleeping bag to cover our legs and use the damp comforter to cover our upper halves. This works pretty well until the rain starts dumping down in the middle of the night soaking everything under and around us except a little part of ground under Alex. I stay as long as I can in the tent but soon my knees and ankles start to ache from the wetness and the cold so I go to the car at about 3:00 AM. I can't go back to sleep after 7 so I listen to NPR to see what's happening in the world. Healthcare was the big issue that morning. At about 8:30 Alex starts toward the car with some things from the tent. I jump out and start helping him bring stuff in, everything is totally soaked. It is so wet outside that I take off my jacket and wear as little as possible because it's all getting drenched. We squeeze out as much water as we can from the stuff and throw it all in the car hoping to dry it at a laundry sometime soon.
From the Ozarks we head to Little Rock to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The library is huge and includes two of Clinton's cars plus recreations of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room. It also chronicles everything that he did during his presidency, which is just so much it's amazing, and it has letters between the president, first lady and many famous and interesting people. One of my favorites was from Mother Theresa to the First Lady. It was still pouring rain when we leave the library and go to a laundromat. At the laundromat I am being argumentative because I'm sick of this whole trip and Alex and I have a big fight over coffee. I know, coffee. We go get the damn coffee and then make up while the stuff is going through its second cycle. I'm being argumentative. You're being pessimistic. . . I'm sorry.
From there, since we know it's going to rain again, we pay for a hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas the boyhood home of Bill Clinton.
That night I'm feeling really sick and we find out that the quickest way to New Orleans is by going through Memphis, Tennessee.
Oct 8, 2009
My dad has always told me that he never EVER wants to drive through Nebraska again. When he was in college he purposefully went around it to the north or the south just to avoid the boring state. I didn't think that was possible, I thought that there had to be some interesting things about it. I was mistaken.
We left the seedy crack motel in the morning and I drove to Chimney Rock. When I finally saw it I was pretty excited. When we left, I had no idea that I was leaving the most interesting scenery in Nebraska behind us only to be confronted with flat fields for the next two days. Alex does over half the drive today because I'm really starting to come down with it. At times my whole body is so sore that all I can do is sit in my seat trying to relax and gaze blurredly out at the fields passing my window. Every time I cough I sit in pain for about 5 minutes as my body recovers from the movement.
When we get to Kansas Alex has used up most of his reserves and can barely breathe in the cold air. He manages to put two tent pegs in the ground alone and then I help him put in the other two and put up the tent. I make us some chicken noodle soup and fried bread hoping that'll make us feel better. Alex has a few spoonfuls and then can't eat anymore. This is when we look at the weather and find out that it's going to be 25 degrees tonight with 25 mph wind and freezing rain. We have very little money and there's nothing around so we go to bed at 5 saying that if it gets too bad we'll sleep in the car or pack everything up and head south.
Everything is okay for a few hours, but then the wind picks up and the way it blows through the trees it sounds like the entire ocean dumping waves down 10 feet away. Crash, crash, woosh! The tent is periodically blasted with a huge gust, and I spend most of the night looking at the tent cover worried that I'm gonna have to go outside and find it if it blows off. Then I remember that we left our burner with a pot on it outside and I worry that I won't be able to find that in the morning. Then the freezing rain starts. It blasts the sides of the tent over and over. It's steadily getting colder and Alex and I are holding each other to keep from freezing. At about 5 in the morning it lets up a bit and Alex and I sleep for maybe 3 hours. When we go outside we find the ENTIRE tent covered in a thin sheet of ice. I hit the outside of the tent and shards of ice break off and fall to the ground.
We decide to split up the labor, me outside packing things up and Alex inside the car packing things in. We decided on this because I felt a lot better than he did after that horrible night. I get everything inside the tent packed up and to him. As I'm putting the tent away, with no gloves, my hands start to freeze. I look at them, they're not the colour they should be and I run back to the car and start to cry. Alex says, "Let me go out there and finish the tent."
"No" I say through tears, "you're sicker than me. You stay here and I'll go finish the tent." Putting away the stupid tears, I hate being a Cancer sometimes, I get Alex's gloves and go back out into the 20 degree weather to put away the tent. I get so frustrated with the tarp when it won't roll up that I throw it down on the ground and yell at it. Finally I get everything in the car and start driving. To where exactly I don't know but I'm getting out of this fucking cold TODAY.
For two hours I drive down highways in Kansas. Everything is covered in ice and the car likes to drift back and forth on the asphalt. At about 11:00, in the middle of Kansas we stop at an IHOP and get breakfast. I figure even though we have limited resources, this is a time when a hot meal made by someone else is in order. We must have looked like death when we walked in: pale with rings around our eyes from not sleeping, our clothes three days old, our hair a mess under our hats. I have chorizo with eggs, hashbrowns and tortillas; Alex has the Breakfast Sampler which has eggs, hash browns, pancakes, bacon and sausage. We drink 3 cups of coffee each before we decide it's time to get back on the road again.
After another 4 hours of driving we stop in Wichita for Mochas at a Starbucks. Oh sweet mochas! They give us enough boost to keep going the next 3 hours into MIssouri. In those three hours we start to see trees on the landscape. Not just your normal trees either, fall coloured trees. The landscape gets a little more hilly and we find ourselves in the Mark Twain National Forest well after the sun has set, putting up our tent to in the light of the car's headlamps.
We left the seedy crack motel in the morning and I drove to Chimney Rock. When I finally saw it I was pretty excited. When we left, I had no idea that I was leaving the most interesting scenery in Nebraska behind us only to be confronted with flat fields for the next two days. Alex does over half the drive today because I'm really starting to come down with it. At times my whole body is so sore that all I can do is sit in my seat trying to relax and gaze blurredly out at the fields passing my window. Every time I cough I sit in pain for about 5 minutes as my body recovers from the movement.
When we get to Kansas Alex has used up most of his reserves and can barely breathe in the cold air. He manages to put two tent pegs in the ground alone and then I help him put in the other two and put up the tent. I make us some chicken noodle soup and fried bread hoping that'll make us feel better. Alex has a few spoonfuls and then can't eat anymore. This is when we look at the weather and find out that it's going to be 25 degrees tonight with 25 mph wind and freezing rain. We have very little money and there's nothing around so we go to bed at 5 saying that if it gets too bad we'll sleep in the car or pack everything up and head south.
Everything is okay for a few hours, but then the wind picks up and the way it blows through the trees it sounds like the entire ocean dumping waves down 10 feet away. Crash, crash, woosh! The tent is periodically blasted with a huge gust, and I spend most of the night looking at the tent cover worried that I'm gonna have to go outside and find it if it blows off. Then I remember that we left our burner with a pot on it outside and I worry that I won't be able to find that in the morning. Then the freezing rain starts. It blasts the sides of the tent over and over. It's steadily getting colder and Alex and I are holding each other to keep from freezing. At about 5 in the morning it lets up a bit and Alex and I sleep for maybe 3 hours. When we go outside we find the ENTIRE tent covered in a thin sheet of ice. I hit the outside of the tent and shards of ice break off and fall to the ground.
We decide to split up the labor, me outside packing things up and Alex inside the car packing things in. We decided on this because I felt a lot better than he did after that horrible night. I get everything inside the tent packed up and to him. As I'm putting the tent away, with no gloves, my hands start to freeze. I look at them, they're not the colour they should be and I run back to the car and start to cry. Alex says, "Let me go out there and finish the tent."
"No" I say through tears, "you're sicker than me. You stay here and I'll go finish the tent." Putting away the stupid tears, I hate being a Cancer sometimes, I get Alex's gloves and go back out into the 20 degree weather to put away the tent. I get so frustrated with the tarp when it won't roll up that I throw it down on the ground and yell at it. Finally I get everything in the car and start driving. To where exactly I don't know but I'm getting out of this fucking cold TODAY.
For two hours I drive down highways in Kansas. Everything is covered in ice and the car likes to drift back and forth on the asphalt. At about 11:00, in the middle of Kansas we stop at an IHOP and get breakfast. I figure even though we have limited resources, this is a time when a hot meal made by someone else is in order. We must have looked like death when we walked in: pale with rings around our eyes from not sleeping, our clothes three days old, our hair a mess under our hats. I have chorizo with eggs, hashbrowns and tortillas; Alex has the Breakfast Sampler which has eggs, hash browns, pancakes, bacon and sausage. We drink 3 cups of coffee each before we decide it's time to get back on the road again.
After another 4 hours of driving we stop in Wichita for Mochas at a Starbucks. Oh sweet mochas! They give us enough boost to keep going the next 3 hours into MIssouri. In those three hours we start to see trees on the landscape. Not just your normal trees either, fall coloured trees. The landscape gets a little more hilly and we find ourselves in the Mark Twain National Forest well after the sun has set, putting up our tent to in the light of the car's headlamps.
Oct 6, 2009
Through Wyoming
We wake up and I make some coffee on our burner in the room. We don't eat breakfast because I want to get on the road and Alex isn't hungry. Then we pack everything in the car and I start driving to Nebraska because Alex is still too sick. After driving for about an hour I start to get hungry and I really really want a sausage and egg McMuffin; my family used to eat them in the morning when we moved. So I ask Alex if he wants to go to McDonalds. He says yes and when we get there breakfast is over so we get chicken McNuggets, but my craving continues. Eastern Wyoming is a succession of hills covered in snow. Hill after hill, nothing but snow. Very few houses let alone towns.
As I drive on we are consistently dropping elevation and as we drop the snow gets thinner and thinner. The white hilly expanse gives way to a yellow hilly expanse. We turn off the freeway onto a county highway and make our way towards Scottsbluff and Chimney Rock. I've always wanted to come here since I played the Oregon Trail game on the computer when I was young. You know, you were robbed by bandits and they stole 2 oxen and 1 wheel. I always loved getting to Chimney Rock in the game and always wanted to see it with my own two eyes.
When we get to Nebraska the temperature is 39 degrees, about the same as Sheradin, and 10 degrees warmer than Helena. I look online for a cheap Motel in Scottsbluff and find one on the outskirts of town. We drive by it the first time because it looks really seedy. There are three buildings built in the shape of a U with a parking lot in the center. Outside of the rooms are barbeques and groups of 2-3 guys smoking. The parking lot is filled with cheap cars and trucks. I ask Alex if it's okay and he says "Yes" he's really tired from the road and anywhere with a bed is good to him. So I drive back and park up outside the office. When I go in there's a really haggard looking woman behind the counter smoking a cigarette and she asks me, "Can I help you?"
"How much would a queen room be for tonight?"
"$56"
"How about with a AAA discount?"
"I could maybe go to $51."
I should haggle with her but I don't; "Okay." I fill out the papers and get the key and drive us to the room.
This is when I find out that we have $100 left of everything we made in Helena. A lot of it was used but I had no idea it was that much. When I park I just sit there for a minute and put my head down on the driving wheel. Alex makes a little "Oh" noise and puts his hand on my back and leans over and kisses the back of my head. I'm exhausted from driving 700 miles in the snow and cold for 2 days. At the beginning of the trip I was trying not to get sick, but all the moving has made that impossible. For the past day I've just been trying to hold it off but it looks like now it's gonna happen. I pull myself out of the car with my camera, some Heinz tomato soup, the brew back and my sweatpants. Alex also gets out of the car and we go and lie down on the bed. I take a bath and transfer money from my bank account to my credit card before I fall asleep, now we have $400 until my grandmothers check comes through when my parents get back from Hawaii. Next door some Iraq war Vets are having a party with people coming and going all night. They keep me awake. By morning I'm a bit delirious as the sickness begins.
As I drive on we are consistently dropping elevation and as we drop the snow gets thinner and thinner. The white hilly expanse gives way to a yellow hilly expanse. We turn off the freeway onto a county highway and make our way towards Scottsbluff and Chimney Rock. I've always wanted to come here since I played the Oregon Trail game on the computer when I was young. You know, you were robbed by bandits and they stole 2 oxen and 1 wheel. I always loved getting to Chimney Rock in the game and always wanted to see it with my own two eyes.
When we get to Nebraska the temperature is 39 degrees, about the same as Sheradin, and 10 degrees warmer than Helena. I look online for a cheap Motel in Scottsbluff and find one on the outskirts of town. We drive by it the first time because it looks really seedy. There are three buildings built in the shape of a U with a parking lot in the center. Outside of the rooms are barbeques and groups of 2-3 guys smoking. The parking lot is filled with cheap cars and trucks. I ask Alex if it's okay and he says "Yes" he's really tired from the road and anywhere with a bed is good to him. So I drive back and park up outside the office. When I go in there's a really haggard looking woman behind the counter smoking a cigarette and she asks me, "Can I help you?"
"How much would a queen room be for tonight?"
"$56"
"How about with a AAA discount?"
"I could maybe go to $51."
I should haggle with her but I don't; "Okay." I fill out the papers and get the key and drive us to the room.
This is when I find out that we have $100 left of everything we made in Helena. A lot of it was used but I had no idea it was that much. When I park I just sit there for a minute and put my head down on the driving wheel. Alex makes a little "Oh" noise and puts his hand on my back and leans over and kisses the back of my head. I'm exhausted from driving 700 miles in the snow and cold for 2 days. At the beginning of the trip I was trying not to get sick, but all the moving has made that impossible. For the past day I've just been trying to hold it off but it looks like now it's gonna happen. I pull myself out of the car with my camera, some Heinz tomato soup, the brew back and my sweatpants. Alex also gets out of the car and we go and lie down on the bed. I take a bath and transfer money from my bank account to my credit card before I fall asleep, now we have $400 until my grandmothers check comes through when my parents get back from Hawaii. Next door some Iraq war Vets are having a party with people coming and going all night. They keep me awake. By morning I'm a bit delirious as the sickness begins.
Oct 5, 2009
"Alex"dote: Cold
Anyone that knows me will know I do not care for snow; too damn fucking cold. It may look pretty and fall in a wonderful 'Yay! It's Christmas!' kind of way, but it's cold, freezing cold. I mean snow is frozen rain, when it's too cold to even become rain to begin with.
Too damn fucking cold.
Woke up Monday morning to find an inch and a half of snow outside. Still looks pretty, still too damn fucking cold.
Too damn fucking cold.
Woke up Monday morning to find an inch and a half of snow outside. Still looks pretty, still too damn fucking cold.
Through Montana
After picking up some supplies in Wal-Mart we head off toward Wyoming. I am driving because Alex is too sick to sit up straight let alone drive 150 miles. Once we get out of Helena we find ourselves heading straight into a snowstorm. Big snowstorm. I drive through this storm for 2 hours and have to stop and get coffee. I pull off the road at a little town in the middle of nowhere in Montana that has a gas station, a gift shop and a beauty salon/coffee shop. I prepare myself for the snow and dash through it into the beauty salon/coffee shop. When I get in the door, to my right women are getting their nails done, to my left is a beauty gift shop, in the middle of the building is the coffee counter, past that are women getting their hair cut, and past that behind a wall are the tanning beds. Its like a warm ball of pink fluffiness exploded inside the building expelling all the dismal cold outside. The woman behind the coffee counter took 20 minutes to make 2 mochas. 20 minutes. I guess they don't get a lot of coffee customers. And when she gave me back my change she miscounted and only charged me $2 for the drinks.
I dodge back through the snowflakes and deep puddles, coffees in hand and get back on the road. After another hour of driving the snow finally stops and we stop at Little Bighorn Battlefield to see it. But once we get there it starts to snow again and Alex is in no position to be outside in it so I keep driving. We cross over into Wyoming as it's getting dark. When we get to Sheradin we drive around town, Alex is feeling horrible, until we find a Motel 6 and get a room for the night. When we get to the room we bring in as little stuff as possible and get Alex into the bath. While he's taking a bath I look outside to see it snowing all over everything. Everything is covered in white. It must have been snowing here for at least a week. We watch some TV and pass out.
I dodge back through the snowflakes and deep puddles, coffees in hand and get back on the road. After another hour of driving the snow finally stops and we stop at Little Bighorn Battlefield to see it. But once we get there it starts to snow again and Alex is in no position to be outside in it so I keep driving. We cross over into Wyoming as it's getting dark. When we get to Sheradin we drive around town, Alex is feeling horrible, until we find a Motel 6 and get a room for the night. When we get to the room we bring in as little stuff as possible and get Alex into the bath. While he's taking a bath I look outside to see it snowing all over everything. Everything is covered in white. It must have been snowing here for at least a week. We watch some TV and pass out.
Leaving York
On Tuesday Alex and I clean the camper and pack the car. This entails getting dried bacon grease off the stove we've been using and reconsolidating all our stuff. After that's all over, Tuesday night we make steak with rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper for dinner. We know it's gonna be our last good meal for awhile so we decided to make it good. The steak was really yummy and we used up the last of our butter on the baked potatos. Satisfied with our meal and needing rest for the next day we go to sleep only for Alex to start to get sick. At about 12:00 his eyes hurt, then he gets the shivers, then he starts coughing and can't sleep. By 4:00 AM he can barely put one foot in front of the other enough to get to the bathroom.
When we get up at eight in the morning, he's still feeling terrible. I don't know where he gets his strength from, but somehow he packed the rest of our stuff in the car while I finished cleaning everything in the camper. At about 10, we go to Bill's house and give him a card and cookies to thank him for everything he did for us. We tell him that we'll send him postcards and as we pull out of the driveway we write down his address. When we get to York I go into the bar and Naomi is working. I tell her that we're leaving and she gives me one of the warmest hugs I have ever had. She gives me the bar's address and I tell her that I'll write soon.
Then we stop at Steve's place before leaving town. I bring him cookies and a card too. We all sit together and he gives us his friend Beaver's number. Steve says, "He's the nicest guy who ever broke my jaw. And he knows some English people down in Florida. He says he'll make you feel at home." Steve gives Alex and I a hug and then we set off from York.
When we get up at eight in the morning, he's still feeling terrible. I don't know where he gets his strength from, but somehow he packed the rest of our stuff in the car while I finished cleaning everything in the camper. At about 10, we go to Bill's house and give him a card and cookies to thank him for everything he did for us. We tell him that we'll send him postcards and as we pull out of the driveway we write down his address. When we get to York I go into the bar and Naomi is working. I tell her that we're leaving and she gives me one of the warmest hugs I have ever had. She gives me the bar's address and I tell her that I'll write soon.
Then we stop at Steve's place before leaving town. I bring him cookies and a card too. We all sit together and he gives us his friend Beaver's number. Steve says, "He's the nicest guy who ever broke my jaw. And he knows some English people down in Florida. He says he'll make you feel at home." Steve gives Alex and I a hug and then we set off from York.
Oct 4, 2009
"Alex"dote: Snow
We stood smoking under the shed to cover ourselves from the snow fall.
"It's snowing!" she gleefully cried, grinning from ear to ear and jumping up and down on the spot.
She stops, "My cheeks hurt!"
I smile, then walk over to the car, gather some snow from the roof into a ball and walk back toward her.
I throw the ball at her, making contact with her chest, and smile again.
"You hit me with a snowball!" she smiles, cutely. "It's snowing!"
"It's snowing!" she gleefully cried, grinning from ear to ear and jumping up and down on the spot.
She stops, "My cheeks hurt!"
I smile, then walk over to the car, gather some snow from the roof into a ball and walk back toward her.
I throw the ball at her, making contact with her chest, and smile again.
"You hit me with a snowball!" she smiles, cutely. "It's snowing!"
In Helena Today
The radio tells us most everything these days: it told us about the bowling alley, the sale at Power Townsend (the local hardware store), and most importantly the weather. It said yesterday that the snow level would drop to 4300 (we're at 4500) feet last night after midnight. It said the high today would be 48. In actuality, it didn't snow until this morning and the high was 39.
I woke up at 10. I don't know why, but I sleep in really late if I can in the camper. I think it's the bed; I know I won't have one much longer so I want to enjoy it while I can. Anyway, when I woke up Alex told me to come outside. When I did, it was as cold as an ice rink and little snowflakes were falling and melting on the ground. "We'd better get into town soon; I have a feeling once this starts it's not gonna stop." So we started the car, went inside, collected all our laundry, made fresh coffee and started out for Helena.
The car making a little ticking sound we drive the dirt road toward York. We pass Bill's neighbors, the house with a courtyard and a pond, the house that looks like a mansion and belongs in the South, the road bends and bends and then we come to the paved road. This curves past a homestead with 10 cattle, a few smaller houses and finally bursts out into York with it's collection of about 20 houses along the road and stretching out for about 2 miles. Between all the houses are wooden fences or yellowing trees and on all the land green grass still grows.
Then we pass the home with the greenhouse, hydroponic greenhouse that is, with it's chicken coop across the yard. From there rock cuts down to the road on the right side, and the sun where it breaks through the clouds shines brilliant rose, yellow and blue colours from normally gray stone.
From there the land opens up into a vast valley covered in cattle ranches. The sky is soft, a deep gray and I'd like to take a plane up through those clouds and see the sun on the other side. The grass is the same yellow it is before the sun sets. The river, once deep blue as the ocean is now grayer than the asphalt road. No one is out in Helena. It's the first day of winter, and people are cozying up in bars, coffee shops, homes and friend's homes.
We jump out of the car and get the laundry going in a laundromat near downtown. Then we jump back in the car and drive to our coffee shop where we order mochas and relax on the comfy couch and check up on life in the connected world. I leave after 30 minutes and change the lanudry, then come back and get back down to the mocha and internet.
Soon, we'll go to the sale at Power Townsend where people are stocking up on weatherizing products. Here people put anitfreeze in boats, RVs and cars. Here people paint their porches for the winter so they don't rot. Here, they need weather stripping on their doors and caulk little holes because they let the freezing cold into their houses. Here, you actually need a heater or a fireplace, it's not a luxury. Here people are huddling down for the long long winter while we're planning to head south. South to the warmer climes. Out of the land where you need to drink whiskey in your cider to keep warm at night, where it's too damn cold to go out and smoke after dark and where the people are the most friendly I've ever known.
I woke up at 10. I don't know why, but I sleep in really late if I can in the camper. I think it's the bed; I know I won't have one much longer so I want to enjoy it while I can. Anyway, when I woke up Alex told me to come outside. When I did, it was as cold as an ice rink and little snowflakes were falling and melting on the ground. "We'd better get into town soon; I have a feeling once this starts it's not gonna stop." So we started the car, went inside, collected all our laundry, made fresh coffee and started out for Helena.
The car making a little ticking sound we drive the dirt road toward York. We pass Bill's neighbors, the house with a courtyard and a pond, the house that looks like a mansion and belongs in the South, the road bends and bends and then we come to the paved road. This curves past a homestead with 10 cattle, a few smaller houses and finally bursts out into York with it's collection of about 20 houses along the road and stretching out for about 2 miles. Between all the houses are wooden fences or yellowing trees and on all the land green grass still grows.
Then we pass the home with the greenhouse, hydroponic greenhouse that is, with it's chicken coop across the yard. From there rock cuts down to the road on the right side, and the sun where it breaks through the clouds shines brilliant rose, yellow and blue colours from normally gray stone.
From there the land opens up into a vast valley covered in cattle ranches. The sky is soft, a deep gray and I'd like to take a plane up through those clouds and see the sun on the other side. The grass is the same yellow it is before the sun sets. The river, once deep blue as the ocean is now grayer than the asphalt road. No one is out in Helena. It's the first day of winter, and people are cozying up in bars, coffee shops, homes and friend's homes.
We jump out of the car and get the laundry going in a laundromat near downtown. Then we jump back in the car and drive to our coffee shop where we order mochas and relax on the comfy couch and check up on life in the connected world. I leave after 30 minutes and change the lanudry, then come back and get back down to the mocha and internet.
Soon, we'll go to the sale at Power Townsend where people are stocking up on weatherizing products. Here people put anitfreeze in boats, RVs and cars. Here people paint their porches for the winter so they don't rot. Here, they need weather stripping on their doors and caulk little holes because they let the freezing cold into their houses. Here, you actually need a heater or a fireplace, it's not a luxury. Here people are huddling down for the long long winter while we're planning to head south. South to the warmer climes. Out of the land where you need to drink whiskey in your cider to keep warm at night, where it's too damn cold to go out and smoke after dark and where the people are the most friendly I've ever known.
Oct 2, 2009
Time to Leave
I looked up at the sky last night and saw glimpses of the full moon creeping behind the thick rain clouds, and I thought back to a month ago and the full moon I saw in Washington. It doesn't seem like we have done a lot since then, but we have experienced so many things and interacted with a variety of awesome and interesting people.
It's getting damn cold in Montana. Too cold for me and my joints. Too many aches in this kind of weather. Time to head south for the winter.
And now it's almost time to move on, to head onto the road again, racing the weather, on our way to the next stop; Kentucky.
It's getting damn cold in Montana. Too cold for me and my joints. Too many aches in this kind of weather. Time to head south for the winter.
And now it's almost time to move on, to head onto the road again, racing the weather, on our way to the next stop; Kentucky.
Oct 1, 2009
Advice to my young cousin. . .
I was crocheting a hat yesterday, and I started thinking about my young cousin who I'm making the hat for. She's a teenager now and I started thinking of a list of advice that I would have given myself if I were that age again, such an old person thing to do hehe. But here's the list, I don't think I'll ever give it to her, what do you think about it?
Listen to the news.
Get out of the country as soon as you can.
Feel deeply the joys and heartaches of your life.
Don't worry.
Support your opinions with fact.
Read.
Learn to do something useful with your hands.
Follow your heart wherever it leads.
Meditate.
Remember: you can find a way to do anything you want to do.
Don't worry too much about your body.
Find and develop your style.
Be aware of why you react to things the way that you do.
If you don't like something about yourself, change it.
Don't worry about what others think of you, your opinion matters more than theirs.
Say "yes" to things more than "no".
Stay positive, life is too short to waste time being negative.
Do things that make you uncomfortable.
Get your heart good and broken, then learn from it and move on.
See music played live whenever you can, especially international music.
Talk to people, and decide what kind of company you want to keep.
Always be interested in the other side of an argument.
Change your mind.
and above all, enjoy your individuality.
Listen to the news.
Get out of the country as soon as you can.
Feel deeply the joys and heartaches of your life.
Don't worry.
Support your opinions with fact.
Read.
Learn to do something useful with your hands.
Follow your heart wherever it leads.
Meditate.
Remember: you can find a way to do anything you want to do.
Don't worry too much about your body.
Find and develop your style.
Be aware of why you react to things the way that you do.
If you don't like something about yourself, change it.
Don't worry about what others think of you, your opinion matters more than theirs.
Say "yes" to things more than "no".
Stay positive, life is too short to waste time being negative.
Do things that make you uncomfortable.
Get your heart good and broken, then learn from it and move on.
See music played live whenever you can, especially international music.
Talk to people, and decide what kind of company you want to keep.
Always be interested in the other side of an argument.
Change your mind.
and above all, enjoy your individuality.
Portraits
Man 1
Come see my room
full of elk
By the way
I have a job for you
And
why dont you stay
for dinner
Woman 1
Well here's a latte and a crepe for lunch
use my bathroom if you need a shower
You need to stop smoking
I remember when I was young
my parents smoked all the time
they rolled their own cigarettes
I think it's a disgusting habit
Well there's a long story behind why I started to smoke.
It's just disgusting and you shouldn't do it
Man 2
There're just gettin t' be too many laws
When I was young
you use t' get days off school for hunin
excused days
for hunin
and you use 't be able t' go way back in the hills
wherever you wanted
now they've got fences up
now I don't go to church
but when I go up in them hills there
that's my church
Man 3
Oh i'm alright
The cows are gettin through the fence
down there
an' I gotta go get em back
Come on Skeet!
Good boy!
Come see my room
full of elk
By the way
I have a job for you
And
why dont you stay
for dinner
Woman 1
Well here's a latte and a crepe for lunch
use my bathroom if you need a shower
You need to stop smoking
I remember when I was young
my parents smoked all the time
they rolled their own cigarettes
I think it's a disgusting habit
Well there's a long story behind why I started to smoke.
It's just disgusting and you shouldn't do it
Man 2
There're just gettin t' be too many laws
When I was young
you use t' get days off school for hunin
excused days
for hunin
and you use 't be able t' go way back in the hills
wherever you wanted
now they've got fences up
now I don't go to church
but when I go up in them hills there
that's my church
Man 3
Oh i'm alright
The cows are gettin through the fence
down there
an' I gotta go get em back
Come on Skeet!
Good boy!
Sep 29, 2009
"Alex"dote: 80's Rock
Never in my life have I heard as much non-essential 80's rock, as I have in Montana.
Sep 28, 2009
Pies, Guns n' Fun
Last night we had dinner with Kay, the lady Candice is working for. She cooked us Cajun chicken and bought chocolate pie for desert. It was all very tasty and we had a good night. When we got back to 'DA SLUM', we were chilling outside when something dawned on me:
This woman was the first person I had met since being in Montana that didn't own a rack of guns or kill and eat their own food.
Now, I'm all for people having guns.
Sorry, I mean I'm all for people with some kind of a brain, and/or a reasonable level of training, having guns to shoot things for a reason.
When we stopped at our first campsite in Oregon, we met the lovely old couple. Like so many aged American couples, they toured around their home state in an unnecessarily large RV, stopping at a campground and sitting there for a week, socializing with all the other old couples who are doing exactly the same thing. Every one of them I've come across have travelled around America, seen everything, etc, etc. In the middle of a conversation with this particular old guy about how excited I was about traveling and camping around the country, he informs me that dispersed campsites are dangerous places where everyone wants to rob you and he would never dream of staying at one [Note: this might have something to do with the fact that his giant fucking RV wouldn't fit there]. He always carries a shotgun with him when he drives because the beautiful country he was just raving about, is only filled with evil people who want to take everything from two old people pulling an RV. He continued to back this up with some kind of story where some time, some place someone of some color ALMOST robbed him when they looked at him in a funny way and he ALMOST had to pull out his gun, blah, blah, blah. He also said that even if he's in a state where his license isn't valid, he still carries his gun, for 'protection'.
There's no need to have a gun "to protect yourself". You don't need to protect yourself from evil criminals who don't live anywhere near you and aren't planning on stopping by to rob you, rape you or kill you. And do you really think having a gun hidden somewhere in a lock box will help you if they do come knocking? Oh please.
You are idiots. You should probably just dirty a bullet with your own simple brains.
I have a problem with all the older Republicans waving their .44's and screaming about their 'right to bear arms'. Really?! Have you actually read it?
Amendment #4: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
Meaning, in my mind, weapons for the armed forces, and the right for people to KEEP and bear their arms. This in a time when men needed to form militias to protect land, or were traveling in wagons (not RV's) and people out there were really trying to kill them.
I don't see you picking up your gun, joining the army and running off to find bin Laden, who you've also conveniently forgotten that you haven't found in your stupid "War on Terror".
How the living fuck to you have a war against a noun?
All the people I've met in York are Republican, own guns, shoot guns, and kill animals; which they subsequently eat. Game tastes damn good. However most people here kill their animals with a bow and arrow. They just sit in a tree, make a few sounds, wait for it to come along, then shoot it in the lungs.
I've met people here who are amazed there is so little gun crime in England, and that cops don't carry guns. I explain that if you don't let people have guns, less people have guns, therefore police don't need to protect themselves, and the public, with guns.
Like I say, I'm not against guns. Guns are fun.
This woman was the first person I had met since being in Montana that didn't own a rack of guns or kill and eat their own food.
Now, I'm all for people having guns.
Sorry, I mean I'm all for people with some kind of a brain, and/or a reasonable level of training, having guns to shoot things for a reason.
When we stopped at our first campsite in Oregon, we met the lovely old couple. Like so many aged American couples, they toured around their home state in an unnecessarily large RV, stopping at a campground and sitting there for a week, socializing with all the other old couples who are doing exactly the same thing. Every one of them I've come across have travelled around America, seen everything, etc, etc. In the middle of a conversation with this particular old guy about how excited I was about traveling and camping around the country, he informs me that dispersed campsites are dangerous places where everyone wants to rob you and he would never dream of staying at one [Note: this might have something to do with the fact that his giant fucking RV wouldn't fit there]. He always carries a shotgun with him when he drives because the beautiful country he was just raving about, is only filled with evil people who want to take everything from two old people pulling an RV. He continued to back this up with some kind of story where some time, some place someone of some color ALMOST robbed him when they looked at him in a funny way and he ALMOST had to pull out his gun, blah, blah, blah. He also said that even if he's in a state where his license isn't valid, he still carries his gun, for 'protection'.
There's no need to have a gun "to protect yourself". You don't need to protect yourself from evil criminals who don't live anywhere near you and aren't planning on stopping by to rob you, rape you or kill you. And do you really think having a gun hidden somewhere in a lock box will help you if they do come knocking? Oh please.
You are idiots. You should probably just dirty a bullet with your own simple brains.
I have a problem with all the older Republicans waving their .44's and screaming about their 'right to bear arms'. Really?! Have you actually read it?
Amendment #4: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
Meaning, in my mind, weapons for the armed forces, and the right for people to KEEP and bear their arms. This in a time when men needed to form militias to protect land, or were traveling in wagons (not RV's) and people out there were really trying to kill them.
I don't see you picking up your gun, joining the army and running off to find bin Laden, who you've also conveniently forgotten that you haven't found in your stupid "War on Terror".
How the living fuck to you have a war against a noun?
All the people I've met in York are Republican, own guns, shoot guns, and kill animals; which they subsequently eat. Game tastes damn good. However most people here kill their animals with a bow and arrow. They just sit in a tree, make a few sounds, wait for it to come along, then shoot it in the lungs.
I've met people here who are amazed there is so little gun crime in England, and that cops don't carry guns. I explain that if you don't let people have guns, less people have guns, therefore police don't need to protect themselves, and the public, with guns.
Like I say, I'm not against guns. Guns are fun.
Sep 27, 2009
Second Week In York
So, on Monday Bill informs me that Steve (the Elk man) wants to get in contact with us. As cell phone reception is non-existent in York, Steve leaves a message at the bar, they pass it on to Bill, who in turn is giving it to us. Steve needed us to stop over in the morning to split some wood for him, he said he'd treat us right if we could help him out.
So there we are at 8:30 in the morning, staring at a HUGE pile of tree (Steve cuts down the trees himself and splits them up to sell as fire wood). Thankfully he has a motorized splitter, thus removing the need for an axe, and a lot of the effort/work!
"Just work your way through towards the back," Steve says pointing at the pile of tree after showing us how to operate the splitter, "I've gotta go see a dog walking client, and then I've got another one this evening, so I like to eat around 4:30pm, I'll cook you dinner."
We wave goodbye to Steve and start to split up the wood. What looked like it would take a couple of hours, in fact took 7 (with breaks), but there was a mother fucking shit load of wood. Steve had said if we had any problems to go and talk to the neighbors, a nice old couple.
But, within an hour, the old guy had popped out to make sure we were OK, and the woman had brought us fresh baked muffins.
Fucking tasty fresh baked muffins.
Like I say though, we did manage to do nearly all of it before Steve returned. He told us to take a quick shower whilst he finished getting dinner ready. Dinner tonight was a kind of roast, but made with deer. It was fucking awesome!
White tail deer is my new favorite thing you can kill and eat.
Got to spend the rest of the week working on the cabin with Bill. This is really good work as it gives me a better idea of building a place when me and Candice get round to settling somewhere (see Candy blog: )
I've been insulating, paneling and trimming. I already know how to do these, but they're all good things to know how to do, and to see how people do differently. The cabin is coming along nicely, with only the kitchen and bathroom, plus a few smaller places, left to go. Then it's on to staining and varnishing. Should be completed by the end of next weekend.
Then, the weather starts to change for the worse, so who knows where the next story will come from...
So there we are at 8:30 in the morning, staring at a HUGE pile of tree (Steve cuts down the trees himself and splits them up to sell as fire wood). Thankfully he has a motorized splitter, thus removing the need for an axe, and a lot of the effort/work!
"Just work your way through towards the back," Steve says pointing at the pile of tree after showing us how to operate the splitter, "I've gotta go see a dog walking client, and then I've got another one this evening, so I like to eat around 4:30pm, I'll cook you dinner."
We wave goodbye to Steve and start to split up the wood. What looked like it would take a couple of hours, in fact took 7 (with breaks), but there was a mother fucking shit load of wood. Steve had said if we had any problems to go and talk to the neighbors, a nice old couple.
But, within an hour, the old guy had popped out to make sure we were OK, and the woman had brought us fresh baked muffins.
Fucking tasty fresh baked muffins.
Like I say though, we did manage to do nearly all of it before Steve returned. He told us to take a quick shower whilst he finished getting dinner ready. Dinner tonight was a kind of roast, but made with deer. It was fucking awesome!
White tail deer is my new favorite thing you can kill and eat.
Got to spend the rest of the week working on the cabin with Bill. This is really good work as it gives me a better idea of building a place when me and Candice get round to settling somewhere (see Candy blog: )
I've been insulating, paneling and trimming. I already know how to do these, but they're all good things to know how to do, and to see how people do differently. The cabin is coming along nicely, with only the kitchen and bathroom, plus a few smaller places, left to go. Then it's on to staining and varnishing. Should be completed by the end of next weekend.
Then, the weather starts to change for the worse, so who knows where the next story will come from...
Sep 26, 2009
Montana Values
Montana, in my mind, was a place filled with hardcore, God-fearing Republicans, with a gun and a ranch.
Funnily enough, I'm not that far off. People ARE religious, but their church is the wide open spaces of the state. If a man here needs some reflection time etc, he just fucks off into the forest with his bow and hides out with his own thoughts, maybe killing something he will subsequently eat, but not always. I appreciate this concept.
I've met a couple of guys here who have been 'taken to the cleaners' by their ex-wives, but they just go "Oh well," and then rebuild.
When I got divorced, my ex took 'everything', but I came to the understanding that it was only stuff. I'm not going to fight over a car, microwave, set of salad spoons, etc, etc.
What's the point?
They are NOT the important things that need to be worked out in a divorce; your own and your kids mental/physical well-beings are.
I expected people living as families even if it didn't work, cos that's the way it is, but instead I've met a large number of people in Montana who have been divorced, some of them three or four times. Although their relationships didn't work out, all the people I've talked to made sure their children were OK. Their kids meant the world to them, and so they should.
This, I totally appreciate.
Despite being completely jaded by my marriage experience, and never wanting to experience it again (at the moment), I do respect those who are married and make it work. It's certainly not easy, and you ALWAYS have to want it. I know how hard this can be and how it's much easier to believe it will just work, and then before you know it, you end up stuck in a rut.
I realize you have to make sure everyday, that you spend time remembering all the things you love and like about your partner. Talk to them, tell them HOW YOU FEEL, and don't focus on the negative stuff. Let them grow, grow yourself, and grow together.
It's not easy, but why should a great thing be easy to keep?!
Funnily enough, I'm not that far off. People ARE religious, but their church is the wide open spaces of the state. If a man here needs some reflection time etc, he just fucks off into the forest with his bow and hides out with his own thoughts, maybe killing something he will subsequently eat, but not always. I appreciate this concept.
I've met a couple of guys here who have been 'taken to the cleaners' by their ex-wives, but they just go "Oh well," and then rebuild.
When I got divorced, my ex took 'everything', but I came to the understanding that it was only stuff. I'm not going to fight over a car, microwave, set of salad spoons, etc, etc.
What's the point?
They are NOT the important things that need to be worked out in a divorce; your own and your kids mental/physical well-beings are.
I expected people living as families even if it didn't work, cos that's the way it is, but instead I've met a large number of people in Montana who have been divorced, some of them three or four times. Although their relationships didn't work out, all the people I've talked to made sure their children were OK. Their kids meant the world to them, and so they should.
This, I totally appreciate.
Despite being completely jaded by my marriage experience, and never wanting to experience it again (at the moment), I do respect those who are married and make it work. It's certainly not easy, and you ALWAYS have to want it. I know how hard this can be and how it's much easier to believe it will just work, and then before you know it, you end up stuck in a rut.
I realize you have to make sure everyday, that you spend time remembering all the things you love and like about your partner. Talk to them, tell them HOW YOU FEEL, and don't focus on the negative stuff. Let them grow, grow yourself, and grow together.
It's not easy, but why should a great thing be easy to keep?!
Sep 24, 2009
This week in York. . . (Bob Marley Story)
On Tuesday Alex and I split wood for Steve all day. At the end of the day Steve came back and we ate whitetail deer for dinner with Julie and Bob(?), who moved to York last year. The deer was amazing! He seared it on both sides then left it to stew all day with onions- it just fell apart when we ate it. The closest thing I can compare it to is lamb, but it's so much better than lamb.
Steve had gone to Kay's house that day to train her dog. While he was there he told her about us and she said that she'd love to have some painting done. I called her that night after dinner and we arranged for me to go down the next day and start painting. After that Alex, Julie, Bob and I all went down to the bar and had a few drinks and a few shots of Alex's new favorite whiskey Early Times. Before we parted I told Julie that I'd come read her tarot cards the next day.
In the morning I was HUNG OVER! Terrible headache, but I pulled myself outta bed and drove out to Helena to start painting for Kay. Turned out I spent the whole day sanding down the porch. Kay was amazingly nice and bought me a latte in the morning and took me out to get crepes in the afternoon. The owner of the crepe shop does all the major catering in Helena, especially for the Democratic Conventions Kay said. Kay's a democrat, difficult to find here in Helena, and we've had some great conversations about the president and healthcare and racial equality.
I went to read Julie's cards that night, and some of the things in the cards really clicked with her. And she told me this great story about how she once met Bob Marley:
Well I was really depressed and I was living in Portland. And there was this guy that was trying to date me and I really wasn't into it. But one day he told me, "Julie I want you to come meet someone, not a date, no boyfriend and girlfriend thing, I just want you to come meet this guy cuz I'm worried about you and I don't like to see you unhappy." So I go with him to this bar. And in the bar there's this big tough looking guy, the kind of guy where if you were walking down the same side of the street you'd cross to the other side. But I looked in his eyes for three seconds, I counted, three seconds and he had the kindest most open eyes of anyone I've ever met. Just so kind.
And he and I became friends, he thought of me like a little sister. He was a music promoter and so we saw a lot of shows. And one time we jumped in his car and drove all the way to Brooklyn, New York to meet his family and I got to meet all his friends back home. We took 2 and a half weeks to get there stopping on the way.
Well one day I'm bored and I give him a call, "What're you up to?"
"What're you up to?"
"Nothin, I'm bored."
"Well, I'm tryin to get some paperwork done but I keep getting interupted." He owned a bar and so I offer to come down and help out. It's illegal cuz I'm only 19 at the time, but I offer to just jump behind the bar and get things when people need them so he can sit down and finish his work.
"You'd really do that? I only need about an hour" he says and I said "Well sure."
Now, I was only there for about 45 minutes, and by that time the old guy reading a paper in the corner had left and the two guys drinking beers were gone. I was alone in the bar and I started to hear this knocking on the bottom door, you know, the door that opens out to where things get delivered from the street. I here this knocking and I remember that he told me that if anybody knocked on that door, not to open it, to go straight to him.
So I go into his office and say, "Hey"
"I just need 10 more minutes!"
"Well there's someone knocking on the bottom door."
"There is?"
"There is."
"Well, I guess you better come with me." So I follow him out to the bar and down the stairs and when we get to the bottom there's this big black guy, I mean HUGE, and next to him is this guy with long long dreds wearing a red, yellow and green western shirt. And my jaw drops and I look at him and I reach my had in my pocket where I have a Marley cassette, I pull that out and I point at it, and I point at him and say, "You're Bob Marley? This is you?" and he throws his head back laughing and smiles, "Ja man".
So we all go upstairs and lock up the bar and Bob and me and my friend all sit there in a semicircle and I can't understand a word Bob's saying. I tell my friend and Bob catches on and says emphatically, "You don't understand me?" he smiles and then he pulls out a huge joint, like the size of a quarter at the end, and we all sit there and smoke this huge Bob Marley joint together. And the whole time I'm smiling and absolutely floored.
Now, he only stayed for about twenty minutes. And my friend told me later that he normally wouldn't let anyone be around him and Bob, but that I really needed to meet him. Bob had come to tell my friend that if he didn't already know that he had a brain tumor and he just wanted to let my friend know that everything was gonna be alright. And that's how I met Bob Marley, he just popped up out of a door and then went back down again.
I wanted to share that story cuz I thought it was so cool!
Well today I went back to the porch and got it half painted. Tomorrow I'll finish it and Kay's gonna make dinner for Alex and I! Hope everythings going well for you!
Sep 23, 2009
A Dream
When I started out on this adventure I wanted to bring with me as little as possible. Like the religious hermits I wanted to leave everything behind in order to be closer to my source. For the religious that source is God, an exceedingly simple idea for me. Since I have stopped being religious I have gone through many years of uncertainty about what my source is.
First came a refusal of anything but the imperical, for how can one base such an important thing as their source on anything that cannot be proven? I studied many philosophies and found that all lacked a real understanding of the world; by this I mean that every theory about causality, linguistics, religion, reason and more were not exactly right. How? It was as if every person had looked at the world and interpreted it according to their time period and personal influences and none of them were right for my time period and personal influences. For no matter how much we try to remove ourselves and be "objective" we can never get away from those small things that order reality for us. I came to the realization that we can only be aware of what is affecting our thinking.
At some point a woman named Jeda came into my life and had a profound influence on my reconnection with the immaterial. I brought out tarot cards that had been in a closet for five years and we read them together. Through my bond with the cards I realized that there must be something more to existence than what we see. Something tugged at my soul from inside because I have felt my dead grandfather and great grandmother. I have sometimes had to tell ghosts to "go away". I have seen the sun set over the desert and felt totally at peace, like I was an extension of the ground.
After these many years, I have come to think of my source as something within myself. People tell me I am wise, so maybe this approach works for me and won't work for others, but I've decided that the most important thing is to figure out what I want. But what do I want? I wasn't born like some knowing: I want a big house on a hill, I want to be a doctor, I want . . . Much of my life I have decided what to do based upon what it will get me in the future. If I take this class then I can get into college. If I get into college then I can get a job. If I can get a job then I'll be happy. This is how my train of thought went since high school. It's as if the rest of your life doesn't exist until you get out of college and then you're stuck: what do you do?
Well, you're supposed to (a) get married, buy a house, go on vacations and have kids or (b) pay rent on an apartment, date people, go to clubs and go on vacation. Those I realized pretty quickly were not my dreams. But I didn't know the shape of my dream. It includes a man. Hopefully one that will be a good partner for my whole life. It includes a house and kids, though not for some years. It also includes waking up in the morning with useful things to do.
Like when I divested myself of all the theories I could to figure out what really exists, now I have divested myself of all of my stuff to figure out what I want. It's remarkably freeing getting rid of stuff; having as little as possible makes many things a whole lot easier. Most importantly because I love to travel, if I have all my stuff in the car, I can go wherever I want whenever I want. I don't have to sit through a week of work waiting to get out of the city only to have two days before I have to get back again so I can go to work and pay my bills. Now we just have to work until we have enough money to last us until the next place, then we find work again. We had enough to get us to Montana, then we decided to get a job on a ranch. That worked out well. Now, we'll travel until we get to Kentucky or Tennessee and then work at a distillery.
With this ability to move around my dream is starting to take shape. My dream house has four rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and large living room. My dream land has a creek for water and plenty of good soil for growing. Living on the land will be a cow (for milk and cheese), chickens (for eggs) and maybe a pig (for bacon). There is a small orchard with apples, pears, persimmons, lemons, limes and pistachios. There are also many fruits and vegetables growing: tomatoes, avocados, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, lettuce, strawberries, blackberries and pumpkins and squash in the fall. I will make all of the curtains and tableclothes in the house. Alex will make most of the furniture in the house and he and I will build the house, with a porch wrapping around it. When it's cold outside I'll listen to the radio and crochet hats and scarves. If we can, we'll have a piano and I'll play whenever I can. And, if we have kids, Alex and I'll make their toys in the woodshop and on the sewing table. I'd like to also be able to write out on the farm. I'd want to make children's books when I have kids. To write fairy tales about the farm when they get older. To continue to write philosophy and see if anyone wants to read it.
Now, the overwhelming question, why? Why a simple country life instead of city glamour? Why a life working land instead of offices? Why make toys instead of buy them? Why make cheese? Why sustainable? So many questions to ask, and so many answers but the most accurate is that I'll be nearer to the things that are real. I'll be with trees and plants, making the things I need to sustain myself. If I want water, I'll go get it. If I want sunflowers, I'll grow them. We'll be at the whim of nature; some years will be good and some will be bad. At times we might have nothing. But I've done my best work improvising and I have all the womanly and some of the manly skills needed for working on a farm. Looking back on my life, I realize I unwittingly cultivated the skills I need: sewing, building, cooking, preserving, gardening, astronomy, hiking. . . And this is a good dream, because most of all I want to have a welcoming home.
The cities and suburbs are not places for me to live. They crowd people in and box them out from the world. I had to live in the city to realize that I wanted the country. This is not to say that I don't enjoy a club, ballet, museum or art show. I do, but that is not my life. And when my kids are growing up, even though they're in the country, Ill make sure that they have good experiences in museums and ballets. I'll make sure my land isn't too far outside a major city.
Now, for the neighbors, I'd prefer them to be kind; not that they do or say the right thing at the right time, but that they're genuinely kind people. People who give because they like to give, not because they expect something in return. People who throw a party just to have a good time together. People who come to see you just because they want to talk.
What is your dream? And why do you want it?
Sep 22, 2009
First Week of York
1st Week In York.
This has been a pretty random week. Right now, as I sit here writing this blog, Candice is baking an apple pie while we listen to people waltz on the radio. Quite how you are supposed to work out what is going on whilst two people waltz on the radio, I do not know, but if I find out I will share it.
Tuesday, we sat down and stared at our VERY last dollar. (below)
But! Not a problem!
We were sitting in a trailer on Bill's land. Bill, an awesome guy whose family have been on the land pretty much 200 years, has given us some work for a few weeks and a place to stay. The license plate reads: "DA SLUM". Sweet trailer: lots of space, large bed, kitchen, fridge, shower; all life's luxuries!
Spent the day collecting large branches off the floor. [Note: Willows are awesome trees. If you like firewood, have a few. If you hate branches scattered all over the ground, don't]
The next day I was moving bails of hay. 200+ bails of hay. Stops being fun and starts to feel like a workout/work really quickly!
On Thursday I learnt how a hay bailing machine works, mainly cos Bill's bailer is busted, and we had to work out how to fix it in the 'duct tape and a hammer fixes all' kind of way, to save spending unnecessary money on it.
A bailer is pulled along a line of hay on the ground by a tractor. The machine picks up the hay and pushes it down into a box shaped section that squashes the hay into the required size/weight box. Twine is wrapped around the bail by large feeding pins and these funky little plier shaped chrome pincers make a knot out of the two ends of the twine. The bailer keeps pushing more hay in, and this pushes the completed bail out the back. Simple. But as all the working parts are powered from one cog turning to three cogs, turning to eight cogs, etc, etc; it's simplicity is amazingly complicated.
Bill had needed to weld the twine feeding pins back together (them snapping in half being the main reason why the machine didn't work in the first place). Replacement pins for this bailer cost $125 each. With the pins welded just off centre, one of them broke again the minute we kicked the bailer into life. No progress that day.
Friday, with the pin re-welded, we made sure they would fit, using a hammer to aline the bracket. It was a lovely, sweet, tight fit. Perfect. We started up the machine, and pulled it with a tractor, over the hay.
PING!
A brace bolt snaps on the cogs that lead on to it making a knot, and we don't have any the right size to replace it. A brace bolt is like an electrical fuze. It holds two main cogs together and if any part of the machine is jammed and under pressure, the bolt snaps, severing the connection to the motor, rather than the machine causing itself thousands of dollars damage.
No worries, we fix this using a nail that we bend on each side of the cogs to hold them in place. Breaking up this fun escapade was filled with a little bit of cow herding in a pickup truck. [Note: Cows in a herd are easy to control and maneuver, but an individual is a really large, fucking stupid animal]
We start the machine back up and watch everything move and spin without anything breaking. Progress. Hay goes in, pieces whirr, hay forms a box shape with twine wrapped round it, but no knot in the twine. The timing is off; the second piece of twine was reaching the first piece after the knot had been tied. We decided to go back and look at the ancient instruction booklet, pick up various sizes of brace bolt (we''ll probably need them) and grab some lunch.
After lunch we decided to switch on the machine and shut it off just as the pins fired up the twine to tie the knot. This way we would know by how much the timing was off. Bill headed off to herd the cows, again, whilst I sprayed down all the cogs of the knot tying section with WD-40, especially the knot tying pincers, just to make sure they didn't stick. When Bill got back he started up the tractor and I watched the moving parts as it rolled forward. Almost immediately the pins shot up and the bailer stopped. I was left thinking Bill had got the timing perfect and had shut the machine off at exactly the right moment.
No such luck. The pins had both jammed and snapped in the same place where they had first broken and two brace bolts had snapped.
Bill sighed and looked at me, "That's it. I'm not tinkering with this anymore. It's time to get out 'The Beast'."
'The Beast' was an older, larger version of the bailer we had been trying to fix. So much bigger and older, it had it's own engine. We managed to get it out from under the shed really easily and positioned it in front of the garage to charge the dead battery. After trying to start it a few times, with it not turning over, we worked out that something must be wrong with the starter motor or a piston in the engine. Bill decided that was it for the day, he was going to get some sleep and think about the engine over the weekend.
Week of work over, $200 better off, me and Candice took off for another 'fun' experience in Wal-Mart, Helena.
On Saturday, as per our invitation, we headed off to a mine, owned by some peeps we met the week before, for a barbecue. No BBQ happening there, but we sat down inside, out of the heat and had a few bowls and beers. I found out that their water pump had broken, so they were out of water, and we offered to help them out any way we could. In what seems to be the 'Montana Way', rather than paying someone to come and fix it, he wanted to pull the pump out the ground himself. All 200 feet of it. Five of us, one hour, a ladder and a lot of pulling later, we had the pump out. We left them before dark, a few beers and bowls later, and a complimentary bag heavier.
This has been a pretty random week. Right now, as I sit here writing this blog, Candice is baking an apple pie while we listen to people waltz on the radio. Quite how you are supposed to work out what is going on whilst two people waltz on the radio, I do not know, but if I find out I will share it.
Tuesday, we sat down and stared at our VERY last dollar. (below)
But! Not a problem!
We were sitting in a trailer on Bill's land. Bill, an awesome guy whose family have been on the land pretty much 200 years, has given us some work for a few weeks and a place to stay. The license plate reads: "DA SLUM". Sweet trailer: lots of space, large bed, kitchen, fridge, shower; all life's luxuries!
Spent the day collecting large branches off the floor. [Note: Willows are awesome trees. If you like firewood, have a few. If you hate branches scattered all over the ground, don't]
The next day I was moving bails of hay. 200+ bails of hay. Stops being fun and starts to feel like a workout/work really quickly!
On Thursday I learnt how a hay bailing machine works, mainly cos Bill's bailer is busted, and we had to work out how to fix it in the 'duct tape and a hammer fixes all' kind of way, to save spending unnecessary money on it.
A bailer is pulled along a line of hay on the ground by a tractor. The machine picks up the hay and pushes it down into a box shaped section that squashes the hay into the required size/weight box. Twine is wrapped around the bail by large feeding pins and these funky little plier shaped chrome pincers make a knot out of the two ends of the twine. The bailer keeps pushing more hay in, and this pushes the completed bail out the back. Simple. But as all the working parts are powered from one cog turning to three cogs, turning to eight cogs, etc, etc; it's simplicity is amazingly complicated.
Bill had needed to weld the twine feeding pins back together (them snapping in half being the main reason why the machine didn't work in the first place). Replacement pins for this bailer cost $125 each. With the pins welded just off centre, one of them broke again the minute we kicked the bailer into life. No progress that day.
Friday, with the pin re-welded, we made sure they would fit, using a hammer to aline the bracket. It was a lovely, sweet, tight fit. Perfect. We started up the machine, and pulled it with a tractor, over the hay.
PING!
A brace bolt snaps on the cogs that lead on to it making a knot, and we don't have any the right size to replace it. A brace bolt is like an electrical fuze. It holds two main cogs together and if any part of the machine is jammed and under pressure, the bolt snaps, severing the connection to the motor, rather than the machine causing itself thousands of dollars damage.
No worries, we fix this using a nail that we bend on each side of the cogs to hold them in place. Breaking up this fun escapade was filled with a little bit of cow herding in a pickup truck. [Note: Cows in a herd are easy to control and maneuver, but an individual is a really large, fucking stupid animal]
We start the machine back up and watch everything move and spin without anything breaking. Progress. Hay goes in, pieces whirr, hay forms a box shape with twine wrapped round it, but no knot in the twine. The timing is off; the second piece of twine was reaching the first piece after the knot had been tied. We decided to go back and look at the ancient instruction booklet, pick up various sizes of brace bolt (we''ll probably need them) and grab some lunch.
After lunch we decided to switch on the machine and shut it off just as the pins fired up the twine to tie the knot. This way we would know by how much the timing was off. Bill headed off to herd the cows, again, whilst I sprayed down all the cogs of the knot tying section with WD-40, especially the knot tying pincers, just to make sure they didn't stick. When Bill got back he started up the tractor and I watched the moving parts as it rolled forward. Almost immediately the pins shot up and the bailer stopped. I was left thinking Bill had got the timing perfect and had shut the machine off at exactly the right moment.
No such luck. The pins had both jammed and snapped in the same place where they had first broken and two brace bolts had snapped.
Bill sighed and looked at me, "That's it. I'm not tinkering with this anymore. It's time to get out 'The Beast'."
'The Beast' was an older, larger version of the bailer we had been trying to fix. So much bigger and older, it had it's own engine. We managed to get it out from under the shed really easily and positioned it in front of the garage to charge the dead battery. After trying to start it a few times, with it not turning over, we worked out that something must be wrong with the starter motor or a piston in the engine. Bill decided that was it for the day, he was going to get some sleep and think about the engine over the weekend.
Week of work over, $200 better off, me and Candice took off for another 'fun' experience in Wal-Mart, Helena.
On Saturday, as per our invitation, we headed off to a mine, owned by some peeps we met the week before, for a barbecue. No BBQ happening there, but we sat down inside, out of the heat and had a few bowls and beers. I found out that their water pump had broken, so they were out of water, and we offered to help them out any way we could. In what seems to be the 'Montana Way', rather than paying someone to come and fix it, he wanted to pull the pump out the ground himself. All 200 feet of it. Five of us, one hour, a ladder and a lot of pulling later, we had the pump out. We left them before dark, a few beers and bowls later, and a complimentary bag heavier.
Sep 21, 2009
Thought On the Trip
So yesterday I thought back, to long before this adventure started, when we would just talk about it with people.
"Yeah, we're going on a roadtrip around America!" I would say, "40 States in 6 months on about six grand."
"That sounds fun," most people would reply, "I guess you're camping everywhere because $6000 won't get you very far.
"Yep, we have a few friends and family dotted around the country. Plus we can always ask people if they need help in exchange for some food and a place to stay. I believe that once you get out of California, everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I'd like to try and see what human kindness is all about in this country."
They would smile, most people in our age bracket with a look of "I'm from California, everyone is just the same as we are, so why are you leaving?" or the older people with the annoying smile that says " You're young and naive, but you'll work out its not like that"
"What are you going to do when that doesn't work out?" they would ask.
"Well, I figure when we run out of money, I'll just go to work on a ranch somewhere. Y'know, mend fence posts for a place to stay and some money in our pocket"
This would guarantee the "Oh God! You're naive!" smile as a response.
Well guess what?
As you know already, we arrived in York the other week. It's a small place, maybe hundred and fifty people at the summer max, no general store, no gas station, just a bar. People here are really, honestly kind to each other. I kept expecting everyone to want or demand something in return.
But no.
Within two days we had been offered a shower if we needed it and a job if we wanted it.
The job came with a trailer for free. First day on the job, Bill drove to the bar to get us cheeseburgers and sodas, and at the end of the day, I got paid my agreed wage for the day, NOT minus the cheeseburger.
We were given meat by another local, just cos he had lots of meat and couldn't eat it all. Other residents would turn up with their trucks and collect some meat in exchange for vegetables. This guy informed everyone present that his vegetables were ready and he had more than he knew what to do with. "C'mon by!" We have met people in the bar who within ten minutes of talking to them, have invited us over the next day for a BBQ. Just to be nice.
Yesterday I spent the day mending fence posts with Bill. Got paid, have place to stay.
Today Steve (the 'Elk man') needs some help with some wood cutting.
Guess I'm not that naive then?
Well, "We're not in California anymore, Treacle!"
"Yeah, we're going on a roadtrip around America!" I would say, "40 States in 6 months on about six grand."
"That sounds fun," most people would reply, "I guess you're camping everywhere because $6000 won't get you very far.
"Yep, we have a few friends and family dotted around the country. Plus we can always ask people if they need help in exchange for some food and a place to stay. I believe that once you get out of California, everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I'd like to try and see what human kindness is all about in this country."
They would smile, most people in our age bracket with a look of "I'm from California, everyone is just the same as we are, so why are you leaving?" or the older people with the annoying smile that says " You're young and naive, but you'll work out its not like that"
"What are you going to do when that doesn't work out?" they would ask.
"Well, I figure when we run out of money, I'll just go to work on a ranch somewhere. Y'know, mend fence posts for a place to stay and some money in our pocket"
This would guarantee the "Oh God! You're naive!" smile as a response.
Well guess what?
As you know already, we arrived in York the other week. It's a small place, maybe hundred and fifty people at the summer max, no general store, no gas station, just a bar. People here are really, honestly kind to each other. I kept expecting everyone to want or demand something in return.
But no.
Within two days we had been offered a shower if we needed it and a job if we wanted it.
The job came with a trailer for free. First day on the job, Bill drove to the bar to get us cheeseburgers and sodas, and at the end of the day, I got paid my agreed wage for the day, NOT minus the cheeseburger.
We were given meat by another local, just cos he had lots of meat and couldn't eat it all. Other residents would turn up with their trucks and collect some meat in exchange for vegetables. This guy informed everyone present that his vegetables were ready and he had more than he knew what to do with. "C'mon by!" We have met people in the bar who within ten minutes of talking to them, have invited us over the next day for a BBQ. Just to be nice.
Yesterday I spent the day mending fence posts with Bill. Got paid, have place to stay.
Today Steve (the 'Elk man') needs some help with some wood cutting.
Guess I'm not that naive then?
Well, "We're not in California anymore, Treacle!"
A Thought On the Trip
So yesterday I thought back, to long before this adventure started, when we would just talk about it with people.
"Yeah, we're going on a roadtrip around America!" I would say, "40 States in 6 months on about six grand."
"That sounds fun," most people would reply, "I guess you're camping everywhere because $6000 won't get you very far.
"Yep, we have a few friends and family dotted around the country. Plus we can always ask people if they need help in exchange for some food and a place to stay. I believe that once you get out of California, everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I'd like to try and see what human kindness is all about in this country."
They would smile, most people in our age bracket with a look of "I'm from California, everyone is just the same as we are, so why are you leaving?" or the older people with the annoying smile that says " You're young and naive, but you'll work out its not like that"
"What are you going to do when that doesn't work out?" they would ask.
"Well, I figure when we run out of money, I'll just go to work on a ranch somewhere. Y'know, mend fence posts for a place to stay and some money in our pocket"
This would guarantee the "Oh God! You're naive!" smile as a response.
Well guess what?
As you know already, we arrived in York the other week. It's a small place, maybe hundred and fifty people at the summer max, no general store, no gas station, just a bar. People here are really, honestly kind to each other. I kept expecting everyone to want or demand something in return.
But no.
Within two days we had been offered a shower if we needed it and a job if we wanted it.
The job came with a trailer for free. First day on the job, Bill drove to the bar to get us cheeseburgers and sodas, and at the end of the day, I got paid my agreed wage for the day, NOT minus the cheeseburger.
We were given meat by another local, just cos he had lots of meat and couldn't eat it all. Other residents would turn up with their trucks and collect some meat in exchange for vegetables. This guy informed everyone present that his vegetables were ready and he had more than he knew what to do with. "C'mon by!" We have met people in the bar who within ten minutes of talking to them, have invited us over the next day for a BBQ. Just to be nice.
Yesterday I spent the day mending fence posts with Bill. Got paid, have place to stay.
Today Steve (the 'Elk man') needs some help with some wood cutting.
Guess I'm not that naive then?
Well, "We're not in California anymore, Treacle!"
"Yeah, we're going on a roadtrip around America!" I would say, "40 States in 6 months on about six grand."
"That sounds fun," most people would reply, "I guess you're camping everywhere because $6000 won't get you very far.
"Yep, we have a few friends and family dotted around the country. Plus we can always ask people if they need help in exchange for some food and a place to stay. I believe that once you get out of California, everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I'd like to try and see what human kindness is all about in this country."
They would smile, most people in our age bracket with a look of "I'm from California, everyone is just the same as we are, so why are you leaving?" or the older people with the annoying smile that says " You're young and naive, but you'll work out its not like that"
"What are you going to do when that doesn't work out?" they would ask.
"Well, I figure when we run out of money, I'll just go to work on a ranch somewhere. Y'know, mend fence posts for a place to stay and some money in our pocket"
This would guarantee the "Oh God! You're naive!" smile as a response.
Well guess what?
As you know already, we arrived in York the other week. It's a small place, maybe hundred and fifty people at the summer max, no general store, no gas station, just a bar. People here are really, honestly kind to each other. I kept expecting everyone to want or demand something in return.
But no.
Within two days we had been offered a shower if we needed it and a job if we wanted it.
The job came with a trailer for free. First day on the job, Bill drove to the bar to get us cheeseburgers and sodas, and at the end of the day, I got paid my agreed wage for the day, NOT minus the cheeseburger.
We were given meat by another local, just cos he had lots of meat and couldn't eat it all. Other residents would turn up with their trucks and collect some meat in exchange for vegetables. This guy informed everyone present that his vegetables were ready and he had more than he knew what to do with. "C'mon by!" We have met people in the bar who within ten minutes of talking to them, have invited us over the next day for a BBQ. Just to be nice.
Yesterday I spent the day mending fence posts with Bill. Got paid, have place to stay.
Today Steve (the 'Elk man') needs some help with some wood cutting.
Guess I'm not that naive then?
Well, "We're not in California anymore, Treacle!"
Sep 17, 2009
Quick Update
We're working on a guy's ranch in York, Montana. He can't pay us much so mostly Alex is just working and I'm trying to find some work in the meantime. I went to the Forest Service this morning and gave them my number to call if they have any anthropology or archaeology stuff that comes up.
We're living in a camper. It's awesome because we have a bed, stove, shower, toilet. heater and air conditioning if we want to use it. The camper's warm in the early mornings and at night which is good because it gets really cold here at those times.
We've decided to go South from here because it's gonna get really cold soon. We figure we'll go through Wyoming then over to South Dakota and then South East to Kentucky and Tennessee then back to Little Rock and New Orleans. After that we're going to go East getting to Florida around Christmastime. After that, when the weather warms up we'll go North. I wonder what'll happen to us on the way. . .
We're living in a camper. It's awesome because we have a bed, stove, shower, toilet. heater and air conditioning if we want to use it. The camper's warm in the early mornings and at night which is good because it gets really cold here at those times.
We've decided to go South from here because it's gonna get really cold soon. We figure we'll go through Wyoming then over to South Dakota and then South East to Kentucky and Tennessee then back to Little Rock and New Orleans. After that we're going to go East getting to Florida around Christmastime. After that, when the weather warms up we'll go North. I wonder what'll happen to us on the way. . .
Sep 15, 2009
Car Packing 101
Intro:
When packing the car for a roadtrip, you'll be surprised what you actually need to have at hand, or at all. Packing the car in a way in which you can reach everything you want to, will greatly reduce your stress level and the time spent hunting for things. It WILL take a few attempts, and a couple of weeks, to get everything in the right places; so persevere!
This is a simple guide to help you on your way!
Try to keep things together in groups: Cold items, canned food, snacks, brew stuff, etc. Also shop cheap (Wal-Mart etc) and in bulk; and pack the extras in the back of the car. [Tip: Keep your plastic bags from grocery shopping - you can use them for trash bags!]
Fridge: Get a good size cooler to keep things cold on hot days, or at least some way cooler than the outside temperature. Buying ice, although pretty cheap, gets expensive when you have to do it every other day.
When you stop somewhere, you can use a stream, creek or lake to keep things colder. Put your fridge items in a plastic bag (without holes) tie the bag up, attach para-chord (or really tough string etc) to the bag handles, dip it into the water and fasten the other end of the line to a tree root/stump/branch.
Try to avoid buying meat as much as possible. although the fridge will keep things colder than outside, you will have to cook and eat it within a day or two, or end up wasting your money when it goes bad. Buy canned meat instead (see Food; below)
Some good fridge items include:
Beer - always good to have around! Go cheap; PBR, Keystone, etc (it doesn't taste as bad as you may think, and tastes pretty much the same cold or warm)
Bacon and Eggs - awesome breakfast food! Along with some fried bread, it gives you energy for the day ahead.
Cheese, Lunch meat, Mayo, etc - Good for a lunchtime sandwich. All keep for a while if kept cooler than the outside world.
Bags: Where possible keep things in bags. Messenger bags (real ones, not the trendy shit) work great as they take up less room, can hold a fair bit of weight, and stack/pack easily. Sandwich bags (the zip-lock kind) are good for condensing things from boxes, packages, etc; taking up less space!
Brew Bag: It's great to have all your hot drinks in one place, making it easier for you to stop and 'get a brew on'. Keep everything in sandwich bags as they take up less space than the containers. Go instant or powdered wherever possible (taste/satisfaction aside!) Don't forget to include a teaspoon!
Favorites include:
Coffee - Instant is easier, but you do sacrifice taste. If you go with ground coffee (it is cheaper for a really big tub) make sure you have a one cup drip and enough filter papers.
Coffee-mate, sugar, etc - if required.
Hot chocolate - Great for the colder evenings! Use water and mix in some Coffee-mate to get a more milky taste.
Cider - Works great for cold nights (mix with some cheap whiskey for a nice cold night pick-me-up!)
Food: Try to choose cans wherever possible. They do have more weight, so they're not great for backpacking, but they can fit in the car nicely. You can find near enough everything you will need in a can: meat, veggies, fruit, pastas, soups, tomato sauce, etc. A variety of cans will mix up your meals so you don't get bored eating the same things every night. It also saves on the number of items you need to keep cold (see Fridge; above)
Spices: It's handy to have a variety of herbs, spices, sauces, etc on hand to add a little something extra to a meal.
Favorites include: Italian seasoning, salt 'n' pepper, mixed herbs, tabasco, stir-fry sauce.
Snack Bag: Always have some snacks on hand for driving, or an evening by the fire. Cheez-its and cookies (take them out the packaging and put in sandwich bags) are good munchy food.
Breakfast bars are great for the mornings when you don't have the time (or the food) for breakfast. They also make good mid-morning snack when you're hiking/travelling.
Miscellaneous : Keep a bag on hand filled with all the extra stuff you need, but don't use often (Coffee, sugar, etc) and put in the items you need to get hold of easier on top (like cooking oil)
Cereal: A good alternative to bacon etc. Buy the big value bags at the store - they cost less, and last longer! Also by being in bags, they take up less room and are easier to pack.
Bread: Always have a loaf, or two, on hand for breakfast and sandwiches. You can also carry the ingredients to make it yourself (see Candice's Bread Making 101)
Water: Always have lots of water available, especially if you are using dispersed campsites with no water facilities. 1 Gallon juice containers work best as containers; they're sturdier than the water jugs you can buy, and fit into the seat well in the back seat of the car. [Tip: You can fill up your water containers at campsites, even if you're not staying there!]
Cooking: A small cooking stove (approx $25) is all you need. Just make sure you always have enough propane canisters available. [Tip: buy these at Wal-Mart; you can get a two-pack and save about a1/3rd of your cost]
Clothes: Despite what you may believe, you WILL need a lot less clothing than you may think. A rugged pair of cargo pants (preferably army issue combats) will suffice for the day to day; and tops can be worn for a few days at a time. The less you have, the less you need to fit in the car, and the less you need to wash! (see Candice's Wilderness Laundry 101)
Go with layering - it will keep you warmer when you need to, and gives you a bit of fashion variety (if you care!) You can put on a tank top, a t-shirt on top, a long sleeved top in between, a sweater on top, etc, etc.
The Car:
You don't need everything all the time! Try to keep the things you need the most in the car and everything else in the trunk.
Pack the stuff you might need at some point at the back of the trunk, and pack your clothes in front. Fold and roll your clothes so that they take up less space.
Put all your food and cooking gear on the back seat, so that you can get to it all easily. [Tip: Put the stuff you need the most on the passenger side as it is normally easier to get to than having the driver get out!]
On top or in front of these bags you can pack your sleeping bags and tent. That way, they're the last things in, and the first things out.
Remember, once you've packed the car, try working with it. If it doesn't work, tweak, and tweak again until you find a way that works for you. You want to try to make everything as easy as possible to pack, unpack, and get to.
When packing the car for a roadtrip, you'll be surprised what you actually need to have at hand, or at all. Packing the car in a way in which you can reach everything you want to, will greatly reduce your stress level and the time spent hunting for things. It WILL take a few attempts, and a couple of weeks, to get everything in the right places; so persevere!
This is a simple guide to help you on your way!
Try to keep things together in groups: Cold items, canned food, snacks, brew stuff, etc. Also shop cheap (Wal-Mart etc) and in bulk; and pack the extras in the back of the car. [Tip: Keep your plastic bags from grocery shopping - you can use them for trash bags!]
Fridge: Get a good size cooler to keep things cold on hot days, or at least some way cooler than the outside temperature. Buying ice, although pretty cheap, gets expensive when you have to do it every other day.
When you stop somewhere, you can use a stream, creek or lake to keep things colder. Put your fridge items in a plastic bag (without holes) tie the bag up, attach para-chord (or really tough string etc) to the bag handles, dip it into the water and fasten the other end of the line to a tree root/stump/branch.
Try to avoid buying meat as much as possible. although the fridge will keep things colder than outside, you will have to cook and eat it within a day or two, or end up wasting your money when it goes bad. Buy canned meat instead (see Food; below)
Some good fridge items include:
Beer - always good to have around! Go cheap; PBR, Keystone, etc (it doesn't taste as bad as you may think, and tastes pretty much the same cold or warm)
Bacon and Eggs - awesome breakfast food! Along with some fried bread, it gives you energy for the day ahead.
Cheese, Lunch meat, Mayo, etc - Good for a lunchtime sandwich. All keep for a while if kept cooler than the outside world.
Bags: Where possible keep things in bags. Messenger bags (real ones, not the trendy shit) work great as they take up less room, can hold a fair bit of weight, and stack/pack easily. Sandwich bags (the zip-lock kind) are good for condensing things from boxes, packages, etc; taking up less space!
Brew Bag: It's great to have all your hot drinks in one place, making it easier for you to stop and 'get a brew on'. Keep everything in sandwich bags as they take up less space than the containers. Go instant or powdered wherever possible (taste/satisfaction aside!) Don't forget to include a teaspoon!
Favorites include:
Coffee - Instant is easier, but you do sacrifice taste. If you go with ground coffee (it is cheaper for a really big tub) make sure you have a one cup drip and enough filter papers.
Coffee-mate, sugar, etc - if required.
Hot chocolate - Great for the colder evenings! Use water and mix in some Coffee-mate to get a more milky taste.
Cider - Works great for cold nights (mix with some cheap whiskey for a nice cold night pick-me-up!)
Food: Try to choose cans wherever possible. They do have more weight, so they're not great for backpacking, but they can fit in the car nicely. You can find near enough everything you will need in a can: meat, veggies, fruit, pastas, soups, tomato sauce, etc. A variety of cans will mix up your meals so you don't get bored eating the same things every night. It also saves on the number of items you need to keep cold (see Fridge; above)
Spices: It's handy to have a variety of herbs, spices, sauces, etc on hand to add a little something extra to a meal.
Favorites include: Italian seasoning, salt 'n' pepper, mixed herbs, tabasco, stir-fry sauce.
Snack Bag: Always have some snacks on hand for driving, or an evening by the fire. Cheez-its and cookies (take them out the packaging and put in sandwich bags) are good munchy food.
Breakfast bars are great for the mornings when you don't have the time (or the food) for breakfast. They also make good mid-morning snack when you're hiking/travelling.
Miscellaneous : Keep a bag on hand filled with all the extra stuff you need, but don't use often (Coffee, sugar, etc) and put in the items you need to get hold of easier on top (like cooking oil)
Cereal: A good alternative to bacon etc. Buy the big value bags at the store - they cost less, and last longer! Also by being in bags, they take up less room and are easier to pack.
Bread: Always have a loaf, or two, on hand for breakfast and sandwiches. You can also carry the ingredients to make it yourself (see Candice's Bread Making 101)
Water: Always have lots of water available, especially if you are using dispersed campsites with no water facilities. 1 Gallon juice containers work best as containers; they're sturdier than the water jugs you can buy, and fit into the seat well in the back seat of the car. [Tip: You can fill up your water containers at campsites, even if you're not staying there!]
Cooking: A small cooking stove (approx $25) is all you need. Just make sure you always have enough propane canisters available. [Tip: buy these at Wal-Mart; you can get a two-pack and save about a1/3rd of your cost]
Clothes: Despite what you may believe, you WILL need a lot less clothing than you may think. A rugged pair of cargo pants (preferably army issue combats) will suffice for the day to day; and tops can be worn for a few days at a time. The less you have, the less you need to fit in the car, and the less you need to wash! (see Candice's Wilderness Laundry 101)
Go with layering - it will keep you warmer when you need to, and gives you a bit of fashion variety (if you care!) You can put on a tank top, a t-shirt on top, a long sleeved top in between, a sweater on top, etc, etc.
The Car:
You don't need everything all the time! Try to keep the things you need the most in the car and everything else in the trunk.
Pack the stuff you might need at some point at the back of the trunk, and pack your clothes in front. Fold and roll your clothes so that they take up less space.
Put all your food and cooking gear on the back seat, so that you can get to it all easily. [Tip: Put the stuff you need the most on the passenger side as it is normally easier to get to than having the driver get out!]
On top or in front of these bags you can pack your sleeping bags and tent. That way, they're the last things in, and the first things out.
Remember, once you've packed the car, try working with it. If it doesn't work, tweak, and tweak again until you find a way that works for you. You want to try to make everything as easy as possible to pack, unpack, and get to.
Sep 13, 2009
Ramdom-ness of the Day
Woke up, chilled out, wrote blog, went for beer, watched 49ers WIN!
By 6pm I'm standing in Steve's "Kill Room", on a beer rug (that incidentally was killed by Lorraine, the lady of the house, with a bow and arrow!) surrounded by antlers and skulls and looking at a photo album of Steve's 'kills'.
Two guys turn up in a pickup to collect some elk, by this I mean two giant hunks of fresh elk meat, killed recently, again with a bow. Had a nice chit-chat with them about vegetables.
Finished the night, by the fire, eating an elk steak and drinking a beer.
Nuff said.
By 6pm I'm standing in Steve's "Kill Room", on a beer rug (that incidentally was killed by Lorraine, the lady of the house, with a bow and arrow!) surrounded by antlers and skulls and looking at a photo album of Steve's 'kills'.
Two guys turn up in a pickup to collect some elk, by this I mean two giant hunks of fresh elk meat, killed recently, again with a bow. Had a nice chit-chat with them about vegetables.
Finished the night, by the fire, eating an elk steak and drinking a beer.
Nuff said.
Elk Meat
I wake up to a duck calling, why a duck is in the campsite I have no idea. I notice that my neck is killing me from the ground we've been sleeping on. We have breakfast and I spend the morning recovering by the fire from YorkFest.
At about one in the afternoon we run out of cigarettes and I remember that I need to call my family. We get in the car and drive out to Lakeshore, the closest town with a grocery store. There we meet a guy from Merced, CA whose been in Montana for about 19 years. I tell him that my dad's from Avenal and he knows the town; crazy to find someone in Montana who knows Avenal!
On the way back to camp, Alex and I decide to drop by the bar and get a beer cuz it's Sunday and football's on. When we get in the 49ers are playing and they actually win! As we're about to leave a guy with long hair who lives in York comes to our end of the bar. After a little chit-chat he says, "You guys should come over."
Thinking he meant later I ask him where his house is. "Oh, just come by now. You were the tarot lady right?" Yeah. "I know my wife'll like having you, come back and see our kill room."
We say sure and follow him out of the bar and down the road to their house all the while thinking what is this kill room gonna look like.
When we get there, Loraine comes out of the house and I recognize her from yesterday. We go inside and they take us to the main room in their house and all of the walls are covered in mounted antlers. There are two bear rugs on the ground and one bobcat one. There are also some wreaths made from bird feathers and a few pelts hanging on the walls. They'd killed everything in the room: probably about 30 animals. On a shelf they have a collection of the skulls from some of the animals.
Loraine and Steve tell us some of the stories of the animals. One of the bears is Steve's and one of them is hers. He shot his when he was 29 years old and when they dated the teeth they found out the the bear was 29 years old too. Her bear was 4 years old. The bobcat Steve'd just trapped and they decided to get it rugged. There is a mink hanging because Loraine told Steve she always wanted one so he trapped one for her. Then Steve goes around the back of the house and pulls out the head of a buck that he'd shot earlier this year: it was huge to my eyes but I'm not really trained in these things. They explain that they shoot everything with bows and arrows, some with rifles. The buck he shot straight in the heart from 15 feet away.
Loraine and I have a good talk. She and Steve dated for about 5 years in Pennsylvania before they got married. The day after they got married they moved out to Montana with $32,000. After two years in York, they bought the house that they're living in now. We talk about her work; she used to do the measurements of antlers and gave hunters scores for them for the Fish and Wildlife Department. Those scores go in a national book if they're high enough. She's been looking for work since she left her job of 16 years last October. Steve does dog training, "He's like the dog whisperer, but much better." He also carves things out of wood.
Before we leave Loraine invites us back and Steve gives us some elk steaks from the bull he'd killed. He shows me how to butterfly meat so that you can make steaks out of it. When I ask him how to cook it he tells me, "Just a little salt, pepper and seasoned salt. And be sure you don't overcook it. Just before you think it's done pull it off and let it rest for about 5 minutes in aluminum foil. You gotta let it rest!" We put the meat in a freezer bag and Alex and I go off back to camp to make elk steaks for dinner.
At about one in the afternoon we run out of cigarettes and I remember that I need to call my family. We get in the car and drive out to Lakeshore, the closest town with a grocery store. There we meet a guy from Merced, CA whose been in Montana for about 19 years. I tell him that my dad's from Avenal and he knows the town; crazy to find someone in Montana who knows Avenal!
On the way back to camp, Alex and I decide to drop by the bar and get a beer cuz it's Sunday and football's on. When we get in the 49ers are playing and they actually win! As we're about to leave a guy with long hair who lives in York comes to our end of the bar. After a little chit-chat he says, "You guys should come over."
Thinking he meant later I ask him where his house is. "Oh, just come by now. You were the tarot lady right?" Yeah. "I know my wife'll like having you, come back and see our kill room."
We say sure and follow him out of the bar and down the road to their house all the while thinking what is this kill room gonna look like.
When we get there, Loraine comes out of the house and I recognize her from yesterday. We go inside and they take us to the main room in their house and all of the walls are covered in mounted antlers. There are two bear rugs on the ground and one bobcat one. There are also some wreaths made from bird feathers and a few pelts hanging on the walls. They'd killed everything in the room: probably about 30 animals. On a shelf they have a collection of the skulls from some of the animals.
Loraine and Steve tell us some of the stories of the animals. One of the bears is Steve's and one of them is hers. He shot his when he was 29 years old and when they dated the teeth they found out the the bear was 29 years old too. Her bear was 4 years old. The bobcat Steve'd just trapped and they decided to get it rugged. There is a mink hanging because Loraine told Steve she always wanted one so he trapped one for her. Then Steve goes around the back of the house and pulls out the head of a buck that he'd shot earlier this year: it was huge to my eyes but I'm not really trained in these things. They explain that they shoot everything with bows and arrows, some with rifles. The buck he shot straight in the heart from 15 feet away.
Loraine and I have a good talk. She and Steve dated for about 5 years in Pennsylvania before they got married. The day after they got married they moved out to Montana with $32,000. After two years in York, they bought the house that they're living in now. We talk about her work; she used to do the measurements of antlers and gave hunters scores for them for the Fish and Wildlife Department. Those scores go in a national book if they're high enough. She's been looking for work since she left her job of 16 years last October. Steve does dog training, "He's like the dog whisperer, but much better." He also carves things out of wood.
Before we leave Loraine invites us back and Steve gives us some elk steaks from the bull he'd killed. He shows me how to butterfly meat so that you can make steaks out of it. When I ask him how to cook it he tells me, "Just a little salt, pepper and seasoned salt. And be sure you don't overcook it. Just before you think it's done pull it off and let it rest for about 5 minutes in aluminum foil. You gotta let it rest!" We put the meat in a freezer bag and Alex and I go off back to camp to make elk steaks for dinner.
Sep 12, 2009
Alex-Rant: Human Waste
So last night the peace and tranquility of the campsite was shattered by caravans and RV's rolling in, mainly for 'York Fest'.
If you ever needed to be shown how wasteful Americans can be - here goes:
Whilst sitting on the bench, stoking and tending to my modest, yet wonderfully hot fire (see Fire Making 101 to build your own!); I looked around.
At one site, featuring an old couple, the man pulled in on his wee 4X4 dragging a whole tree, yes a whole tree, behind him. He proceeded to chop it into pieces with a loud obnoxious chainsaw and throw it onto a giant, not very hot, flaming mess of a fire.
On the next site within my view there was a family with a unnecessarily large RV running a generator for what seems like no apparent reason. My thought is: if you are camping and you need a generator going for hours at a time, you have way too much shit you really don't need.
On the third site, a large family of fat people, with TWO large caravans, decided to leave a propane lamp burning until 3 in the morning - after going to bed at 9 o'clock. It wasn't a small lamp either. 30 odd feet away, I could see everything in front of me better than a full moon burning. Now, maybe their fat children were scared of the dark, and needed to see where their fat little legs were going in the middle of the night; but isn't that why we invented flashlights?!
Three examples, all on one night. A massive, pointless waste of resources that are too few, and are fast running out. I don't quite know at what point camping became a luxury based activity. People need to think more about what they take with them and how much of it they REALLY need to take. If you need a generator going to power the air-con in your over-sized RV; get a smaller fucking RV, and go somewhere not so fucking hot. You never need to go off and chop down a whole fucking tree to burn on a fire that's really not gonna keep you warm (cos it's a wet, live tree you're burning!) Go into the forest, look around a bit more, and you'll see... lots of FALLEN trees already on the floor! Take an AXE, not a fucking chainsaw, and hack pieces off that tree for your fire. It might actually burn better! And you won't need so fucking much wood. I admire people trying to get their fat children out of the house and away from the TV, out into the REAL world; but don't let them sleep in a giant big caravan with the same life they're accustomed to at home - stick them in a tent (they won't die) and hike their fat little asses all over the beautiful country you have decided to camp in the middle of.
I would like to apologize if my language is a little strong/harsh in this blog, but this is something I care about, something that actually matters. If people keep wasting EVERYTHING, then their won't be anything left for future generations to appreciate; when they actually WANT to go out and appreciate it. I would greatly welcome any and all thoughts you may have on this topic. Thank you.
If you ever needed to be shown how wasteful Americans can be - here goes:
Whilst sitting on the bench, stoking and tending to my modest, yet wonderfully hot fire (see Fire Making 101 to build your own!); I looked around.
At one site, featuring an old couple, the man pulled in on his wee 4X4 dragging a whole tree, yes a whole tree, behind him. He proceeded to chop it into pieces with a loud obnoxious chainsaw and throw it onto a giant, not very hot, flaming mess of a fire.
On the next site within my view there was a family with a unnecessarily large RV running a generator for what seems like no apparent reason. My thought is: if you are camping and you need a generator going for hours at a time, you have way too much shit you really don't need.
On the third site, a large family of fat people, with TWO large caravans, decided to leave a propane lamp burning until 3 in the morning - after going to bed at 9 o'clock. It wasn't a small lamp either. 30 odd feet away, I could see everything in front of me better than a full moon burning. Now, maybe their fat children were scared of the dark, and needed to see where their fat little legs were going in the middle of the night; but isn't that why we invented flashlights?!
Three examples, all on one night. A massive, pointless waste of resources that are too few, and are fast running out. I don't quite know at what point camping became a luxury based activity. People need to think more about what they take with them and how much of it they REALLY need to take. If you need a generator going to power the air-con in your over-sized RV; get a smaller fucking RV, and go somewhere not so fucking hot. You never need to go off and chop down a whole fucking tree to burn on a fire that's really not gonna keep you warm (cos it's a wet, live tree you're burning!) Go into the forest, look around a bit more, and you'll see... lots of FALLEN trees already on the floor! Take an AXE, not a fucking chainsaw, and hack pieces off that tree for your fire. It might actually burn better! And you won't need so fucking much wood. I admire people trying to get their fat children out of the house and away from the TV, out into the REAL world; but don't let them sleep in a giant big caravan with the same life they're accustomed to at home - stick them in a tent (they won't die) and hike their fat little asses all over the beautiful country you have decided to camp in the middle of.
I would like to apologize if my language is a little strong/harsh in this blog, but this is something I care about, something that actually matters. If people keep wasting EVERYTHING, then their won't be anything left for future generations to appreciate; when they actually WANT to go out and appreciate it. I would greatly welcome any and all thoughts you may have on this topic. Thank you.
YorkFest
I wake up at 6:30 in the morning. It is damn cold. Last night I got my clothes together: a blue flowing skirt, a tight gray t-shirt, a long black sweater, sandals, silver bracelets, dangling earrings and a green and black checked scarf. Alex makes coffee; I make bacon and eggs. We get in the car and drive to York, the nearest small town to our Vigilante Campsite in Montana. The sun is just peaking over the hills and lighting up the small plots of land along the road. Here is a field of hay, recently cut. There is a beautiful white house shaded by willows; near the house is a restored Montana Freight train.
"Do you know that most of these houses have a golf hole on them?" Alex asks.
"No, I didn't."
"Yeah, when you went up to the firehouse yesterday the owner of the bar told me that they play a round of golf on all of them. I think it's happening today, maybe tomorrow. They just drive from house to house playing the holes."
"How cool!"
We get into town and when I say town I mean to the intersection of the main road with a dirt road that has on its corners a bar and a park. "Did you know that the guy the park is named after died last month?"
"No."
"Yeah he left here awhile ago and went to California and made millions of dollars. When he came back he gave the extra money away to the community. It was his money that built the park, and fixed up the schools and helped a lot of people out."
"Wow!"
"Well, I guess every town has one."
"That reminds me of my grandfather, I wonder who'll replace them."
In the park, people are setting up for YorkFest, a yearly festival whose highlights are a duck race, silent and live auction and Bratwurst! Get your Bratwurst! I know you want one!
When we got there, at about 8:30 in the morning, I found Naomi. "Let me get you your papers."
"So, where would you like me to set up?"
"Oh, wherever ya like. You could take the gazebo if you want or one of the picnic tables."
"Okay, I'll look around and then I'll bring you back the paper."
Alex and I bring my stuff to a picnic table near the entrance, bratwurst lady and YorkFest T-shirt selling table. I look at the paper and see that I need to donate $20 to the fire department in order to set up. "I hope I make back the 20" I say to Alex as I fill out the paper.
Company Name: (Crap what do I write) Elliott Enterprises
Address: Big Sur, Ca (?)
Service Rendered: Tarot Card Reading (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I give Naomi the money, Alex leaves to go back to camp and I set up my table. I duct tape the Tarot Reading sign, that I made last night on the back of a Pabst box, to the front of my table. On the right-hand side of the table I lay out the various "hippie" books that I have: one on tarot reading, the one on past lives that I bought in Portland, and two aromatherapy books. In the middle I lay out the rectangular green and black scarf; on top of this I place my tarot cards.
Then I set to work writing down some information about the readings I'm going to offer, random things I'm going to put on the table, and a short description of what a Tarot deck is. The readings are a simple 6 card spread for $3, a middle 10 card spread for $5 and a 24 card yearlong spread for $7. The simple and middle spreads are for answering specific questions: the first giving limited information, the second giving in depth information. The things on the table that I explain are aromatherapy, the healing properties of a few stones that I have (celestite, crysacolla and jade), and my pendulum. My description of the cards explains the different suits, the governance of astrological signs on the cards, the combination of many different religions' symbols and how I relate
the cards to each other to explain them to the enquirer. These explanations I put to the left of the scarf along with the stones, pendulum and aromatherapy oils I've mixed together in the past: things for sore throats, coughs, muscle pains, depression and a few perfumes.
Then I sit and shuffle the cards, turn them around so that none are upside down and wait for a customer. The people start trickling in at about 10. I say hello to everyone: some of them give me a dismissive hi, some ask how my morning is going but all pass on. I decide to order the cards by suit; in the middle of doing this an older man walks up to the table with his wife and son. He wants me to read his year. During the next few hours I get about 10 people, most wanting me to read about their upcoming year because they can't think of a good question. They are mostly women in their 40s. A lot of them are going through divorces. I have three children, each ones reading is very accurate according to their parents.
After the other stands close up I have a line of 10 people waiting for a reading. Alex keeps them all interested and talking: one is a young mother from Helena who asks me to make some medicine for her. She doesn't have health insurance and she's had a cold for months. I make an oil for her to rub on her face and neck that I really hope helps her heal. There is also an attorney from Helena who has a pet chicken and wants to know what will happen with his work in the next few months. Three of the important women from the town, one of which is going
through a terrible divorce all want to know about their upcoming year. They tell Alex and I that we should take some Bratwurst for free since there's extra.
(Everyone was exceedingly kind. Some were desperate, some were skeptical but most were just curious. They'd all avoided tarot readers because they seemed like scary people or because it was just too expensive.)
When I'm doing my last reading Naomi tells Alex that people want to buy us drinks at the bar and that I can set up down there if I want to read some more. Alex and I pack up all my stuff and head to York Bar, home of the best cheeseburgers in Montana; I don't know what they do to them but they're amazing! A band is playing good rock music on a stage in back of the bar. We walk in and the bar, which used to be a post office, then a store, then a restaurant, and it's filling with people, local people being as all the people from Helena have left by now. As we're ordering Fat Tires, Bob whose family has been in York since the late 1800's, starts up a conversation with Alex and I.
"So how'd your readings go? I hear you'wer the most popular table!"
"They went really well" I say, "I think they made sense to most of 'em."
"Well good!"
"So which house is yours?" I ask.
"The last one before you get down d'the campsite."
"Are those your cows? The black ones?"
"Oh yeah, I've got 40 cows out there but they're knockin' down my fence- I just cut al'la hay 'n they're real anxious d'get down there d'the other field."
He talks about the cows and the fence posts and his other property down the road for a bit and Alex asks, "So, do you know anyone around who could use some help?"
"Well, whatdya know how t'do?"
"I do everything except electrical."
He thinks for a moment or two, "Well I've got a cabin that I wanna get finished b'fore the winter."
"I was thinking that people might have things they hadn't gotten done."
"Well I can take you on for about a month, maybe six weeks. I wouldn't pay ya that much."
Alex looks at me, and I say, "Oh we wouldn't ask for much, just $20 a day and some lunch would be good."
"Oh!" he says knowing that's too low, "I was thinking more like eight dollars an hour."
"That'd be fine" I say.
"And I've got a trailer down in Helena that my son could bring up. You could sleep in that, might be nicer'n a tent."
"So should I come see you on Monday?" asks Alex.
"Well, why don't I come up to the camp tomorrow and I'll find you guys."
"Sounds good."
"You don't need anything now do you?"
At the same time we say, "Oh no! We're fine."
"Oh yea, you've made all that money reading the cards" he smiles to me.
Some of his friends show up about then and we stay on and talk for a bit then we go outside to smoke. Out there we meet Danny who's moved to Montana after 20 years of trying to get here. He's in his 30s, owns 40 acres out by the Missouri River and works out at the Blue Gem Mine, mining sapphires. Somehow I get myself signed up for the wet t-shirt contest that's happening at 9:00 so I go back to the car and put on a little black skirt that just shows from under the big white YorkFest shirt they've given me.
When I get back to the bar it's filled with more people. I meet the people Danny works for: a tall thin man and a woman also tall and thin with long white hair. The man shows me some of the raw sapphires that he's carrying in his pocket and also a little bit of gold that they've found. "So how did you decide to mine sapphires," I ask.
"Well" he says, "I mined so much gold that it lost its shine. But sapphires are amazing, they come in all different colors. Do you know that a ruby is a sapphire that's in the shade of red?"
"I didn't know that. The ruby's my birthstone."
Sometime between meeting them and me doing more tarot reading, is the wet t-shit contenst. (Sadly I didn't win: I think my boobs were just too small. The winners were an Asian woman with fake boobs, Naomi who I think totally deserved to win after all her hard work, and a younger girl with a piercing.)
After that, a few women want their cards read, and I shouldn't do it cuz I'm drinking but I do anyway. I read for the white-haired woman and afterward she askes if I might like to come up to the mine sometime next week. I tell her that I'd love to come on Tuesday. Tuesday is fine with her. I read for some of the other ladies and then I start getting really cold because I'm still wet and Alex and I decide its time to go back to camp and sleep.
All in all it was a productive day. I made us about $120, Alex got a potential job and I got an invitation to go to the sapphire mine.
"Do you know that most of these houses have a golf hole on them?" Alex asks.
"No, I didn't."
"Yeah, when you went up to the firehouse yesterday the owner of the bar told me that they play a round of golf on all of them. I think it's happening today, maybe tomorrow. They just drive from house to house playing the holes."
"How cool!"
We get into town and when I say town I mean to the intersection of the main road with a dirt road that has on its corners a bar and a park. "Did you know that the guy the park is named after died last month?"
"No."
"Yeah he left here awhile ago and went to California and made millions of dollars. When he came back he gave the extra money away to the community. It was his money that built the park, and fixed up the schools and helped a lot of people out."
"Wow!"
"Well, I guess every town has one."
"That reminds me of my grandfather, I wonder who'll replace them."
In the park, people are setting up for YorkFest, a yearly festival whose highlights are a duck race, silent and live auction and Bratwurst! Get your Bratwurst! I know you want one!
When we got there, at about 8:30 in the morning, I found Naomi. "Let me get you your papers."
"So, where would you like me to set up?"
"Oh, wherever ya like. You could take the gazebo if you want or one of the picnic tables."
"Okay, I'll look around and then I'll bring you back the paper."
Alex and I bring my stuff to a picnic table near the entrance, bratwurst lady and YorkFest T-shirt selling table. I look at the paper and see that I need to donate $20 to the fire department in order to set up. "I hope I make back the 20" I say to Alex as I fill out the paper.
Company Name: (Crap what do I write) Elliott Enterprises
Address: Big Sur, Ca (?)
Service Rendered: Tarot Card Reading (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I give Naomi the money, Alex leaves to go back to camp and I set up my table. I duct tape the Tarot Reading sign, that I made last night on the back of a Pabst box, to the front of my table. On the right-hand side of the table I lay out the various "hippie" books that I have: one on tarot reading, the one on past lives that I bought in Portland, and two aromatherapy books. In the middle I lay out the rectangular green and black scarf; on top of this I place my tarot cards.
Then I set to work writing down some information about the readings I'm going to offer, random things I'm going to put on the table, and a short description of what a Tarot deck is. The readings are a simple 6 card spread for $3, a middle 10 card spread for $5 and a 24 card yearlong spread for $7. The simple and middle spreads are for answering specific questions: the first giving limited information, the second giving in depth information. The things on the table that I explain are aromatherapy, the healing properties of a few stones that I have (celestite, crysacolla and jade), and my pendulum. My description of the cards explains the different suits, the governance of astrological signs on the cards, the combination of many different religions' symbols and how I relate
the cards to each other to explain them to the enquirer. These explanations I put to the left of the scarf along with the stones, pendulum and aromatherapy oils I've mixed together in the past: things for sore throats, coughs, muscle pains, depression and a few perfumes.Then I sit and shuffle the cards, turn them around so that none are upside down and wait for a customer. The people start trickling in at about 10. I say hello to everyone: some of them give me a dismissive hi, some ask how my morning is going but all pass on. I decide to order the cards by suit; in the middle of doing this an older man walks up to the table with his wife and son. He wants me to read his year. During the next few hours I get about 10 people, most wanting me to read about their upcoming year because they can't think of a good question. They are mostly women in their 40s. A lot of them are going through divorces. I have three children, each ones reading is very accurate according to their parents.
After the other stands close up I have a line of 10 people waiting for a reading. Alex keeps them all interested and talking: one is a young mother from Helena who asks me to make some medicine for her. She doesn't have health insurance and she's had a cold for months. I make an oil for her to rub on her face and neck that I really hope helps her heal. There is also an attorney from Helena who has a pet chicken and wants to know what will happen with his work in the next few months. Three of the important women from the town, one of which is going
through a terrible divorce all want to know about their upcoming year. They tell Alex and I that we should take some Bratwurst for free since there's extra.(Everyone was exceedingly kind. Some were desperate, some were skeptical but most were just curious. They'd all avoided tarot readers because they seemed like scary people or because it was just too expensive.)
When I'm doing my last reading Naomi tells Alex that people want to buy us drinks at the bar and that I can set up down there if I want to read some more. Alex and I pack up all my stuff and head to York Bar, home of the best cheeseburgers in Montana; I don't know what they do to them but they're amazing! A band is playing good rock music on a stage in back of the bar. We walk in and the bar, which used to be a post office, then a store, then a restaurant, and it's filling with people, local people being as all the people from Helena have left by now. As we're ordering Fat Tires, Bob whose family has been in York since the late 1800's, starts up a conversation with Alex and I.
"So how'd your readings go? I hear you'wer the most popular table!"
"They went really well" I say, "I think they made sense to most of 'em."
"Well good!"
"So which house is yours?" I ask.
"The last one before you get down d'the campsite."
"Are those your cows? The black ones?"
"Oh yeah, I've got 40 cows out there but they're knockin' down my fence- I just cut al'la hay 'n they're real anxious d'get down there d'the other field."
He talks about the cows and the fence posts and his other property down the road for a bit and Alex asks, "So, do you know anyone around who could use some help?"
"Well, whatdya know how t'do?"
"I do everything except electrical."
He thinks for a moment or two, "Well I've got a cabin that I wanna get finished b'fore the winter."
"I was thinking that people might have things they hadn't gotten done."
"Well I can take you on for about a month, maybe six weeks. I wouldn't pay ya that much."
Alex looks at me, and I say, "Oh we wouldn't ask for much, just $20 a day and some lunch would be good."
"Oh!" he says knowing that's too low, "I was thinking more like eight dollars an hour."
"That'd be fine" I say.
"And I've got a trailer down in Helena that my son could bring up. You could sleep in that, might be nicer'n a tent."
"So should I come see you on Monday?" asks Alex.
"Well, why don't I come up to the camp tomorrow and I'll find you guys."
"Sounds good."
"You don't need anything now do you?"
At the same time we say, "Oh no! We're fine."
"Oh yea, you've made all that money reading the cards" he smiles to me.
Some of his friends show up about then and we stay on and talk for a bit then we go outside to smoke. Out there we meet Danny who's moved to Montana after 20 years of trying to get here. He's in his 30s, owns 40 acres out by the Missouri River and works out at the Blue Gem Mine, mining sapphires. Somehow I get myself signed up for the wet t-shirt contest that's happening at 9:00 so I go back to the car and put on a little black skirt that just shows from under the big white YorkFest shirt they've given me.
When I get back to the bar it's filled with more people. I meet the people Danny works for: a tall thin man and a woman also tall and thin with long white hair. The man shows me some of the raw sapphires that he's carrying in his pocket and also a little bit of gold that they've found. "So how did you decide to mine sapphires," I ask.
"Well" he says, "I mined so much gold that it lost its shine. But sapphires are amazing, they come in all different colors. Do you know that a ruby is a sapphire that's in the shade of red?"
"I didn't know that. The ruby's my birthstone."
Sometime between meeting them and me doing more tarot reading, is the wet t-shit contenst. (Sadly I didn't win: I think my boobs were just too small. The winners were an Asian woman with fake boobs, Naomi who I think totally deserved to win after all her hard work, and a younger girl with a piercing.)
After that, a few women want their cards read, and I shouldn't do it cuz I'm drinking but I do anyway. I read for the white-haired woman and afterward she askes if I might like to come up to the mine sometime next week. I tell her that I'd love to come on Tuesday. Tuesday is fine with her. I read for some of the other ladies and then I start getting really cold because I'm still wet and Alex and I decide its time to go back to camp and sleep.
All in all it was a productive day. I made us about $120, Alex got a potential job and I got an invitation to go to the sapphire mine.
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