Los Angeles, CA

Sorry it took me about 3 months to finish writing about a 10 day trip. I'll now set to work to put up some of the pictures I took along the way.
--Rick

posted by Cuento  [4:35 AM]

Long Beach

When I woke up the next morning, Lisa was shaking me awake to tell me she was going to go feed the cats again. I want to say she feeds them 5 times a day, but that's crazy. She couldn't feed them that much. Maybe 3 times a day. "You can just stay here and sleep if you want," she told me.

"Mmmmfrl, grrgle imff foo?" I asked? There was no chance in hell I was waking up as early as whatever what-in-the-hell time it was. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again she was already back.

It was probably around noon then, and my flight left at 6:30, so I really only had time left to do one thing in New York before I left, and I sat down and pondered what that one thing would be. I realized I had done every major tourist thing in NY when I used to study there, except I'd never gotten to see the Met (ropolitan Museum of Art). I asked Lisa along too, and at first she said OK, but then she realized she had a lot of After Effects work to do (she freelances on video stuff) and said I could leave my bag here and pick it up before the flight, but then I was scared I wouldn't have time to get off the subway and back on again, so I decided to take my bag with me and just say goodbye now. She wished me a good flight back to the West, and I wished her luck on her project, and we parted, and I was back on my own again.

I took the subway to Central Park, got out, and it was raining. I walked and got wet, but it was horrifically muggy. I was getting really hot and sweaty inside my sweater, but I didn't want to take it off, because then I would get all wet and cold. You just couldn't win! Finally I got to the museum and the guard wouldn't let me in with my pack.

"Whoa, buddy that's too big. They're never gonna let you check that in. We used to, but not anymore. I'll tell you what you can do, you might be able to go to that hotel across the street and ask them to check it in, or sometimes that pretzel lady down there watches people's bags. The Guggenheim also checks in bags, you might check with them."

He was a very helpful guy but full of wrong answers. I couldn't see which hotel he was talking about, and anyway was sure they would tell me no. The Guggenheim was all the way at the other end of Central Park, and as for the lady at the pretzel stand outside the musuem, I was just too shy to ask her. She probably gets people who always ask her, and she is too kind to say no. I felt bad for people maybe always taking her for granted. So I asked this latina at the shirt stand, but she shook her head no, no. "I go home soon," she said. Which wasn't really true, but at least she was being nice about it. What was I to do?

So I decided to do a really stupid thing, and walked into the park to look for a place to hide my bag. No, not there, too many workers, no not there, people would see it. Finally I found a place that was behind two gates and really out of the way, and besides, it was a rainy day and nobody was out. But I also didn't want my bag to get soaked, so I went around also looking for empty trash cans so I could steal the plastic bags. Well outside a construction area I found a bunch of tough plastic. I walked back to the hiding place, wrapped my bag in a lot of plastic, and hid it by a tree, walked out and closed each gate on my way. Well, I guess we'd see.

The museum was great. Miles upon miles of things, and impossible to navigate. I decided I'd already seen enough van goghs and monets, and anything before that was boring portraits, so I headed right to the modern art section, where everything is either really interesting and thought provoking, or a completely black canvas with one red line across it, entitled "Black Canvas with Red Line, #23."

So the Modern Art section is in the southwest corner of the 2nd level, which is fine enough, but I'm not sure if I entered on the ground level, or If i'm already on level one, or if the ground level is level one, and whether I entered by the East entrance, or the northern entrance, and whether the Mezzanine counts as a floor or not, or what exactly a dotted line means. Finally I find the Modern Art, but there's an additional floor I want to get to of the modern art, but there's a section in between that's under construction, so to get there you have to go out of the section, up two floors, and then down a floor. Or maybe you don't, maybe I just can't read maps, but it was either absorb the art or absorb the map, and I think I made the right choice.

One of the things I really liked was this huge upside-down picture of a tree, not this one:



but one like it. As I'm now writing this, safe at home, I realize that the man who did this, Rodney Graham, is quite famous for his upside-down pictures of trees. I think this would be a good thing to be famous for, but the more and more I go to art museums, the more I realize what a lot of artists have to do to be famous is choose one thing, and do that thing forever until they die. Like Jackson Pollack made paintings by splattering paint on the canvas, like Mark Rothko only makes paintings with large blotches of color, like Monet only painted everyting out of focus. They're cool, but you gotta wonder if the painter just gets bored doing the same thing over and over again. It's kind of like how if a rock band has a hit single, they have to play that song OVER and OVER and OVER again until infinity. It's like a Catch-22. Everyone wants to have a hit, but what if you become handcuffed to that forever? It's an interesting question.

I decided it was probably time for me to leave for the airport, so I started walking outside and then, holy shit!, I remembered my backpack lying in the fucking park and I booked it back worrying the whole time and praying that no one had taken it.

It was sunny now, and at first I was glad, but then I saw a whole lot more people playing in the park and I got even more worried. I rushed back to the deserted area where I had left my bag---the first gate was wide open now. Okay, don't panic, there is a group of mothers watching their children play on the monkey bars. I walk to the second gate...it is also open. I walk past it tho, and no one is around. I look over by the tree and my pack is still there! Oh halleluja. I unwrap it, and everything is safe and dry. The mothers must have been a bit surprised, because I entered empty-handed and left with a rather large pack on my back. The children smiled.

Well, I walked on back to the 86th st. stop, took the train to JFK, and waited.

I flew home. Undoing in about 11 hours what it'd taken me 9 or 10 days to do, erasing my zig-zag across the country in one fell swoop, one solid arc on the map as I watched the map-tv's of JetBlue and watched out trajectory, the temperature, our air speed, and the states go by and I traced my path along the screen. I was ready to be home.

Jen picked me up in Long Beach. The flight from NYC to Long Beach was only $105. I would be able to unpack everything at home and stay for about one day before I would leave again for Portland for my grampa's funeral. I wondered if he was looking down on me now and whether or not he would approve of the whole thing. You wonder if you die and go to heaven, who are you in heaven? Are you when you were 12, anxious to learn? Are you 20-something in Europe in WWII? Are you how you were at war in Korea? Are you how you were preaching to your congregation, hugging and spinning your grandchildren around the room? Or are you losing your mind from Alzheimer's? How can you be all of your selves in heaven? Which of your young, middleage, and old grampa's would approve of you as you are now?

I am happy to be home. I was happy to be seeing my family soon too, whatever the circumstances.

posted by Cuento  [4:11 AM]

NYC

We met up with some friends of Lisa's at 13 Street...I'm not sure if it was actually on 13th, but it probably wasn't. They all worked on the new animated series of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In all I think it was the director (or assistant director) one of the animators, and an inker. "Basically," said the director, a big burly man who could certainly shake a tail feather on the dance floor, "If we don't show up there's no show."

Working on TMNT. That must be a dream.

The inker was a head-banging punk rocker who could do a mean karioke of "Welcome to the Jungle" which Lisa had warned me about. It was definitely bangin. I got up and did what I thought was a pretty comical "Singin' in the Rain," but after I was finished I realized no one could dance to it, and thus everyone had just been staring at me the whole time.

"Hey," Lisa told me when I got done and was blushing from the performance, "At least you got up there and gave it your all." Yeah. Thanks Mariah Carey. There's nothing worse than falling flat on your face and then someone feeling so sorry for you that they say "hey at least you tried!" Man, I know I failed. You don't have to pity me too. I was still thankful tho. She meant well.

At around 2 we all waltzed down out the place and caught some good greasy food somewhere someplace, ate, chatted it all up for as long as we could, and then rolled on home. This was going to be the last night of my trip. We walked by some NYU buildings and it was so strange to be back in NYC, under such circumstances. I thought of what the then-me would have said if it knew the now-me was doing what I was doing. And I smiled.

posted by Cuento  [3:04 AM]

NYC

We hit up Lisa's apt again so I could change outta my ratty clothes before we went to Lisa's friend's gallery opening. There were some very interesting things-- some 10" square photos of fruit cross-sections enlarged to massive, beautiful proportions, some dresses with feminist critique scrawled across them in lipstick, and what Kim's friend _____ had done herself, a collection of 45 two by three inch portraits of trees. The little canvasses were really cute. I think she should sell them separately and make LOTS of people happy. We drank free wine, ate free snacks and desserts, and took lots and lots of fine candy. They had a big bowl O' candy by the front door, and we both reached in, took some, reached in, took a little more, looked around, chatted, slid some more into our pockets. By the time we left, my pockets were bulging, and it felt just like Halloween.

Another of Lisa's friends came down to meet us at the gallery, and with here we went to eat at _____'s, an interesting Mexican restaurant in _____. The 2 punk white twenty-somethings worked the registers & customers with massively gelled hair, tattooes, and piercings. Two Mexicans cooked the food in the same tiny little space, wearing nothing but white T's and jeans. Both groups looked like they had nothing at all to do with the other, and yet they must all work together every single day sharing the same 25 square feet. I wondered how it worked.

From there we left ____, who had a lot of something to do, I forget what, and went to Asylum's, a pretty goth bar on ____, because they had $2.50 beers (no omaha, but still good), or we thought they did anyway. Apparently they'd enacted a new policy where if enough people were in the bar, they upped the cost of the drinks. Lisa knew a bartender there, though, so we were still able to get the cheap prices. Ryock.

What is most depressing about NY these days are the signs at some bars. Ever since the tragedy NY's been in a huge debt, and they've been doing everything, like writing tickets out for sitting on subway steps, to try to make money. Another stupid law they've been enforcing lately is the Cabaret Law, which requires clubs to have a special cabaret license in order to have dancing on the premises. Problem is, this license is very expensive and also very hard to get. So most clubs have these "NO DANCING" signs, because if they get caught with people dancing, they might get fined or shut down. It's depressing. If there's any city that needs feel better, that needs to dance, it's New York. I felt like I was in some cartoon bizarro Footloose world, where smiling is illegal and the sky is black. It really really sucks. I say, Let the People Dance! NO DANCING. Ridiculous. It made me really sad too, until I realized I had pockets full of good-tasting candy. All better!

So after chilling at Asylum's, which had one of those signs, and talking quite a bit about ourselves, we realized Lisa's old boss, who lived across the street, was not coming down after all. So we went to yell up at her room, and we did get her attention, to no avail. We went to 13 Street, a karioke bar, to meet up with the Turtle gang.

posted by Cuento  [3:37 AM]

NYC

We drove through, I remembered it would probably be around the Financial District, and I saw an area blocked off with orange tape, with bulldozers and wreckage and I wondered idly what was going on there. And then I realized it was ash, and I remembered what happened, and I wondered what it would be like, this new New York, and if it would be the same.

I was glad I'd seen the twin towers before they were gone--it was when I saw a free Los Lobos concert as they played at their feet. Robert Cray had opened for them, and the Neville Brothers played there that weekend too. I remember watching plastic bags play in the wind some 60, 70 floors up. What happens is that the towers were so immense, and so close to each other, they created a whirlwind unto themselves, and all sorts of trash like plastic bags and sheets of paper would get caught in the updraft and learn to fly. High as kites, miniature hot air balloons. And I thought of American Beauty, and of the guy that had recorded plastic bags playing in the wind and said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. About a year after that I was reading a screenwriting magazine, and the writer of American Beauty, Alan Ball, had conceived of the whole idea when he was watching plastic bags float around the World Trade Towers, same as me.

I was happy to find out I could still find my way around the city. Not like this is a difficult thing--New York runs like a grid, and everything's numbered in sequential order, with streets as the x-axis and avenues as the y. I could probably find out the fucking slope of the subway lines if I wanted to.

New York is a beautiful city that smells like dog piss. I don't mean to deride it for anything, because it's a fun city and there's tons of things and Europeans seem to love it, but I grew up on three acres of beautiful farm land, and to live in New York feels like being filed away in a shoebox full of hamster-sawdust so you can soil yourself and none of the other rodents will care too much. True New Yorkers only wear black, never make eye contact on the street, and what's probably the worst of all, think Central Park is big. A city of moths.

Sorry. Everyone always rags LA too much and I just had to let everyone know that New York sucks too. If I offended you, Woody Allen, hey, take it easy. We all used to suck.

From the bus station, aka city sidewalk, I walked to the Broadway/Lafette St. subway stop, took it back to Spring st. I think because I needed to switch off an express line or something, and then took the 6 up to Union Square and walked a few blocks to Lisa's place.

Outside her apartment building, which was pretty ritzy, the street was blocked off by about 4 police cars as another 2 cars and a police truck had cornered a white Hummer 2 and were pointing some guns at people's heads. Ahh, New York!

Weaved my way through all the crowd as it gathered and had the doorman ring up my friend. While I waited for her in the lobby I got to hear the whole story, or rather the lack of it, oh, maybe 3 or 4 times.

"What happened?"

"I don't know--it looks like they arrested these guys. I think there were two. They probably stole that car."

"You think they stole the car?"

"Well, something."

"What happened?"

"I think they stole the car."

"They stole the car?"

"Well, sure looked like it."

"You don't know what happened?"

"Well, I think they stole the car."

Lisa let me up to her apartment, where I stowed my stuff, and then we went to go feed some cats.

Lisa's friend was looking after someone else's cats, because of a boss or someone had gotten him a job or something. We'll call this guy Uncle Fred, because it sounds like something an Uncle Fred would do. So Uncle Fred makes his living painting cats. These cats go on calendars mostly, but probably also coffee mugs, sweaters that aunts wear, stationary, and I don't know, a whole bunch of other stuff I probably wouldn't buy. And this guy, like a true artist, he keeps about six cats in his little apartment, so that he can paint them.

So anyway, Uncle Fred goes on vacation, or maybe he's gone on assignment to paint some Siamese or some Sphinx hairless cats, and Lisa's friend does this thing, as a favor to Uncle Fred, or somebody anyway. It's coming back to me. Uncled Fred used to let friend stay there while he tried to find a job in NY. Lisa helped him find a job, then he moves to a place on the other side of town, and he reluctantly asks Lisa to do it, because she lives really close.

Lisa is a girl who if she knew martial arts, could kick some serious ass, and we all hope that she doesn't because then we'd all be in trouble, but inside she's got a sweetheart.

We get to the place and it smells from the outside, but Lisa's prepared me for this by talking about the stench and the piss and the shit and the puke on the entire walk over. I look inside. It smells like cats, no doubt, and there's a lot of mess on the floor and I wouldn't want to touch anything with my actual hands, but it's not bad. I've seen worse (James).

Lisa tells me a bit more about how the cats puke and shit all over each other, and how they have shitting and puking wars and contests where they draw a line and two teams and they just hurl everything they can at each other out of both ends until the entire place is dripping in feces, urine, and upchuck, and I take a look around the place. Don't slip.

There's a pretty cool clankety-clack spiral metal staircase that goes up to the loft, which is nice, so is the view. Lisa starts introducing me to all the cats and tells me all their names and I nod and try to be nice but all I'm thinking is: A, I don't even remember the names of people very well, and B, when the hell am I ever going to meet these cats again? But hey, I guess Lisa's trying to be the good host and I smile.

Uncle Fred's got a printmaking machine next to his kitchen, which is pretty cool, but it's not as cool as what I thought it was, which was a captain's wheel. There's athis big metal wheel that you use to roll the print through, and there was a bunch of crap on the machine so all I saw at first was the wheel, and for at least, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4...probably about seven seconds I thought this Uncle Fred was the coolest guy who had ever lived. How cool would it be to slide your frozen dinner tray into the microwave, and for the next three minutes turn around and play Sea Captain? Arrgh, there she goes! I'll be steerin' a this here boat till one of us keels over in the black brine. Aye, matey, by my calculations if we head ten leagues due northeast we'll be to the great island of Swanson's meal o' chicken and corn bits in no time!!

Well, it was a printmaking machine. Uncle Fred, I'll beat you out for coolest guy yet!

posted by Cuento  [9:23 PM]

New York City

This was Sept. 3rd.

I woke up and left the hostel the next morning-- we had to be out by 10. The night before, the manager had told me about the Chinatown Express, a special bus that left from Chinatown in Philadelphia and drove to Chinatown in NYC and back. It cost $12.50 each way. I decided to do that.

But I wanted to do some sightseeing first. The Liberty Bell stands right in front of the great Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution was formed. They don't know what cracked the bell. The boy scout tour guide tells what it's made of, where it's been, how it was taken as a symbol for the cause of abolutionists because of the words emblazoned across it's forehead-- "Proclaim Liberty througout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof," ---but they don't know what cracked it. They know how it got some nicks and scrapes, but the big crack down the center, they don't know what that is.

Acrosss the street is the Independence Visitor Center, which is free and has lots of Pennsylvania FUN FACTS, a few tour guides in 3-corner hats, and and some films about the beginning of our country, but I had no time for that. They told me how to get to the Philadephia Museum of Art, because I really wanted to see it. Not so much for the art, but because that's where the Rocky steps are. And I wanted to run up them and proclaim my greatness. The Visitor Center sold me a couple bus tokens and I hopped on and went.

I checked my bag in when I got there, paid the $7 to get in, checked my hunka bag, the check in guy seemed cool and so i gave him the website for this journal (and he visited! check out the comments for the "Philadelphia" post) and ventured on in. Took a lot of photos close up and far away from exhibits. They were having a Louis Faurer exhibition. He was a photographer in the fourties who walked the streets of NY and took shots of people. He hunted them, added them to his collection, and went out for more. He took pictures of Times Square while there was still dust on the floor and the lights were new. He walked the streets and lay in wait and complained when the camera was accepted so readily by society and people didn't flinch anymore when he took their picture.

When I was finished I walked out the back, posed like a champ, (ROCKY!! ROCKY!! ROCKY!!) and walked in the rain until I found the bus again and took it back along the Benjamin Franklin parkway back to Market St.

The Chinatown Express was actually named "New Century Travel, Inc" and I couldn't find it very easily because it wasn't clearly marked. I walked into a travel agency and they said it was next door, and when I went in that door it wasn't very clear at all what kind of store it was or what it was they were selling. But a few seated had luggage, and they sold me a ticket for the 3:30 bus. I think we left around 3.

There were a few other young students such as myself on the bus, but predominantly asian, and we listened to lovely chinese pop the whole way to New York. Over the Delaware, on through industrial Jersey, through the pipes and the factories. And then the buildings started to eat their vegetables, and we went down into the Brooklyn Battery tunnel and sprung up in Manhattan.

posted by Cuento  [2:56 AM]

Philadelphia

This happened on Sept. 2nd.

I woke up when it started getting light, and I finally realized what Brett had been telling me about Pennsylvania, and how it was his favorite place to drive, and how he wouldn't mind living there. I believed him now. It was beautiful.

I never pictured Pennsylvania so green, so full of hills, so lush with complicated forests every fifteen miles, forests you'd have to slash your way through, and I thought about the Sons of Liberty, revolutionaries hacking through the forest...Last of the Mohicans! That's what it was like, like the part where they're floating down the river, right before I fell asleep. "I love you!" "I'll save you!" "Don't die for me!" I don't know, something like that.

Beautiful foliage passed by and lovely townhouses and old-fashioned windmills and red barns. We stopped to get some snacks - all I got was a muffin because I imagined us eating a Real American breakfast at a diner down the road, and Brett bought a double-decker calzone pepperoni pizza, because he knew that we weren't going to stop at all until Philadelphia. He turned out as hungry as I was by the end of the trip, though, because his doubledecker turned out impossible to eat and he hadn't bought a fork. The monstrosity sat on the dashboard filling the cab with the glorious smell of the pizza, and taunted us both the entire trip across the state.

A D.O.T. officer (dept. of transportation) passed us by at the mini-market, and Brett sighed with relief because he hadn't updated his books lately, and they might get suspicious of his hitchhiking friend. We sat back, let the D.O.T. car zoom ahead of us, then I sat back and waited for Phila. She appeared around the side of the hill, after taller and taller buildings had claimed her appearance, and I knew I was there when I saw the great pillars of the Museum of Art across the valley. I wasn't expecting Philadelphia to be as green as it was either, but in fact I've only seen two cities greener-- Seattle and Edinburgh. Ok, maybe Rio, but that was more tropical than grassy/foresty, so I don't really count it.

We drove right past all the pretty and right into the heart of the shipping district, where trucks haul shipments to cranes to ships, and the other way too, and everything is covered with rust and barnacles and grist and smoke and grime, and all on a cloudy day. It was the Packer Marine Terminal, it was the Delaware River, and it was right under the Walt Whitman Bridge. Which despite how it sounds, not poetic in the least. We waited in the truck for men to unload the freezer units (I forget what they're called. Maybe Tcoy's sister can email in the answer? At any rate, they keep frozen stuff frozen in the trailer) out of the back of his truck, and Brett tried to find out where he was picking up his next load, where he was taking it, and how I could get myself downtown. Brett had logged in too many hours in the truck, and if he didn't break and sleep now for about four hours, he'd risk his license. For the rest of us, it'd be like driving drunk.

So basically I was stuck. Close enough to Philly to see it but too far to walk. Ok. I sat in the truck and wrote. At shipyards they have these fantastic spider-like tractors that reach up with giant arms to stack the steel containers that pass from ship to truck to train, the oblong rectangles we always see tripping around the world like giant Lego blocks. The spider arms unfolded out and it grabs these things and stacks them three or four high. And a black man in the center of the cab, hat backward, smoking a cigar, dirty and mean the way men are supposed to be, and he's heaving these 12-ton bricks like a kid with an erector set. I felt like I was six, playing in the dirt with a toy tractor underneath the cherry tree, like everything was possible again. Look at what we can do! I didn't know that we could do that.

Brett came back from the office and told me there was a bus coming to the front of the shipyard in about 15 minutes that'd take me straight into town. He seemed pretty pleased that he'd attained this information, and I was too. I don't think either of us knew how to say goodbye, but the time had come, so I took his picture, he took mine, we shook hands, and then the pack was on my back and I was on my own again.

The bus finally came after about a half hour of me worrying that it wasn't going to come, and when I told the busdriver where I wanted to go-- downtown, by where there where some hostels-- he got all confused, didn't know what a hostel was, and told me any place downtown would be expensive. Anyway, if I wanted to get downtown, I should get off his bus and walk three miles south to antoher bustop and take that bus, or take his bus and make a couple transfers, or ...he lost me. Bottom line, he was going to take me closer, and I wanted to be closer, and not walking a few miles farther away. That and he didn't have change for a five, so I asked the lot attendant and he only had $3, he asked a buddy driving out and he only had $2, so they gave me the $5 and the attendant said he owed the driver $2. God bless their hearts.

The bus went directly downtown, and *exactly* where I wanted it to go. After all that. It dropped me off on Market St. and 3rd, a couple blocks north of the historic/waterfront district and 2 blocks west of the Liberty Bell. I got off the bus and started looking for destinations. I'd probably know where I wanted to be once I got there, which to me is the very best way to get there.

As I walked toward the Delaware and paused a lot along the way looking at things and reconsidering my direction, a couple backpackers passed me by, looking at maps and generally assured that they were going somewhere, and so I followed them.

Closely enough not to lose 'em, but giving them enough leeway not to be a serial killer. They led me a couple blocks, down an alley, and directly to the Bank Street Hostel, where I'd be spending the night. Rooms were $21, a bit pricey and a 12:30 curfew kept me unconvinced, but later that night I did some research at a Borders and none of the Penn guidebooks could give me a better deal. Bank St. it was.

I ate around the corner and had my first real authentic Philadelphia Cheesesteak. The man asked me what cheese, and I asked what kind he had, and he told me Cheez Whiz, American, and Swiss. I looked at the big oily processed cans of Cheez Whiz that were stacked behind the counter, and ordered American. He gave me a funny look, and asked, "American?" so I asked him well what was most popular then, and he said definitively, "Chez Whiz." Well give me that then.

It was fucking *GOOD*. These people on the west coast make them like Idiots.

I did a lot of walking with my pack then, to the centrally-located gothic City Hall, around a rather large clock tower, did some research at Borders, made some calls, and then got on the internet at Kinko's. (Thiswas where I posted about Grand Island.) I found out some new information and decided how my trip was going to end. My grampa's burial was going to be on Saturday Sept. 6th, and the funeral was going to be on Sunday. I went online and bought a Jet Blue ticket for $105 from NYC to Long Beach that Jen had faithfully researched for me (thanks Jen!) and called Jessica asking her to research tix from LA to Portland, which she also did, faithfully (thanks Jessica!). Portland was where the funeral was being held. I would arrive in Long Beach on Thursday night. It was nearing time to go home.

But not quite yet! Time to put on my fancy duds and hit the town again. Different day, different city, but same GOOD TIMES. Well, almost. I couldn't get in too much trouble because of the curfew. Adventuresome or not, I did want a place to sleep for the night.

First thing I did before returning to the hostel was to check out the big Philadelphia Marriott, which was housing a Blacks in Government convention, which reminded me of David from Victorville. I don't know why but for some reason I've always had this fetish with really nice hotels and using their facilities without actually staying there. I think I got it from my mother.

This time I really DID get to use the pool, following someone in to the weight gym, sneaking into the locker/changing room. While I was changing to some cheap shorts I bought in Denver, a guy came in to pick up towels, so I acted like I belonged there and he asked me if I wanted to lock up my bag, so I smiled and told him it probably wouldn't fit in the lockers. He asked me where I was from, and I said California, and I asked him how long he'd been in Philly, and he stated proudly, "Born & raised!" He even called me sir.

I swam a few laps and then melted in the hot tub for a bit. Turned the bubbles on high and didn't think I was doing half bad for a drifter. Walked back to the locker room and took a nice long hot shower with one of those shower heads that you can take off and angle any way you'd like. I didn't even have to use my own towel.

"Take care, California," said the hotel guy as I walked out.

"You too, man," I said, and walked back to the Bank Street Hostel, where the kids were taking warm piss-dribble showers on cold floor tiles in dorm-style bathrooms. And I felt sorry for them, because they don't know what I do, that everything is for free, and all you have to do is smile and know you belong.

I went out with the Lomo again, and hit probably four or five bars before the night was through. I was hoping to meet some hostel kids but they were all busy watching About Schmidt on the hostel tv. I wanted to see it too, but I can't go out and rent Philadephia from blockbuster, now can I? Or..hrm, I suppose I can, but it'd be the movie Philadelphia. You can't rent out the actual experience of....oh, you know what I mean.

One of the bars was nice but a little too intimate. Another had cheap drinks (not like Omaha) but of the seven people there, six were bar staff. Some of the other bars looked fine too, but I had no one to walk in with, and wasn't feeling very sociable. I wandered the streets and took some pictures, walked into some bars just to take one picture and leave. I ended up staying at one place lit with candles with 5 pretty girls trying to hit on 3 studly bartenders, and they flipped their fancy shit, and the girls giggled, and I sipped my dos equis and slumped on a pad by the music man, who spun fantastical on his mac PowerBook and let me absorb all of it into the waves of my head until it was time to go home.

I wrote a bit on the notepad I always keep in my pocket, it doesn't make sense to me now, and then I wandered back into the hostel and slept, slept, slept, notes still spinning in my head.

posted by Cuento  [12:43 PM]

Somewhere in Ohio

This was late september 1st, early september 2nd.

I met up with Brett, who was gassing his truck out on the fuel island. We had taco bell (steak quesadillas are gorgeous gorgeous things), took our pisses, and left. Which reminds me, the Greyhound station in Gary had some great bathroom graffiti:

"Scott Stiner, AKA Big Poppa Pump Big Booty Daddy Freakzilla"

I doubt anyone actually called him that.

We drove and Brett talked to me about my trip. "I told my wife about you, and how you were doing it because you wanted adventure, and she said 'He musta been pretty damn bored to want to have an adventure like that!" I laughed. We watched the countryside go by and the roads got a little moist. I took out my notebook to do a bit of journaling before I lost the light, and Brett asked me what kind of stuff I was writing in there.

"Well, I'm writing about you, and all the good stories you told, about your burn accident, and how you got over it, and about the other hitchhikers you've picked up, like the drug runner and the porn star."

He laughed. "You just better remember that the porn star was my friend's story! I don't want my wife reading this and thinking I picked up a pornstar!"

"Don't worry," I said, and I relayed him some of the details that I wrote down and he was pretty impressed that I had actually been listening to him the whole time. "You talk but you never know whether the other person's listening. Most times it's just people nodding their heads." I told him I'd written about seven pages about him, I think because I was pretty impressed with it myself. We hadn't ridden together very long last time.

Then Brett's cell phone rang, and it was his wife, and he talked to her for awhile. Every trucker I knew had to have an enormous cell phone plan for those long nights on the road. Douglas had to buy two phone plans just to keep his marriage together. Tcoy was the lucky one, with a company phone. I can't imagine what it's like to be away from your family for weeks at a time, and that's a life I never want to live.

"What? Oh yeah, he's right here," said Brett into his cell. "Haha, no, he's no serial killer. I can tell. At least he hasn't tried anything yet. Uh, his name's Rick," here Brett picked up the Lotteria card I'd given him earlier, "...uh...Cast..andega."

I corrected him, but it didn't help much.

"Oh, Castnyiededa. Huh? Oh, uh...C-A-S-T...A-N...." he squinted at my handwriting, "G-D..."

"Are you trying to spell my name?" I asked. Brett looked at me and I took the card from him. "No, that's an E. There's no 'G' in my name. No wonder you were mispronouncing it." And I spelled my last name for him.

"How old is he?" Brett asked his wife. "I don't know, he's kinda young."

"22."

"He's 22." Here Brett held his hand over the phone and looked over at me. "She says for you not to kill me, O.K.?"

"Sure," I said, and smiled.

We drove on and on, through Indiana and into Ohio, and I checked another state off the list. The interstate looked the exact same blacks and yellows that it did all over the rest of this country, and my eyes got drowsy looking at tail lights following each other forever.

We were on I-90, which, unless I'm mistaken, is simply the toll-road version of I-80. Brett explained to me about toll-roads, which being from the West I'm not too familiar with. He has a company card that he charges it all to, and the cost depends on the weight, how far he travels, and being a truck how many axles he has. The card logs when he enters the freeway, and when he gets off it tells them how much he owes.

When Brett got tired he pulled over to a rest stop on the toll-road and told me he was going to take a 2-hour nap to recharge his batteries. I got out and wandered into the travel stop, which being on a toll-road was like a glorified rest stop. It had fast food, really nice restrooms, a visitor center, a few tourist shops, and everything was sparkling clean.

I called up home to check in, and nobody was there, so I called Jen's cell phone, and there was music in the background but she sounded really excited to hear me.

"Ohmygod Rick! It's a good thing you called! Your sister has been trying to call you all day, and ohmygod, I just didn't answer the phone but they've been calling and I think your mom called too, and they even called Jessica and we were trying to figure out what to do, to get our stories straight, and I knew you told them that you were going to Kevin's for the weekend but the weekend's over and I'm not sure if you were 'supposed' to be back yet. So we decided we'd just try not to say anything except that you weren't there, and you were suppposed to be on your way back but hadn't got back yet, and but yeah, you should call them because I don't know what we're going to say anymore."

I said ok, ok, and tried to calm her down a bit because she seemed a little excited about it, and so I called my sister and she sounded really sleepy, I'm guessing it was around 11am pacific time, and she said, "Rick?"

And I said, "Yes."

"Where are you?"

"I just got back right now. I got your message--I guess everybody's been trying to reach me, huh?"

"Yeah. Ricky?" She paused. "Grampa died today." And as she kept talking everything slowed down, and everything kind of came in around me and then spread itself out again apart. "They thought he was pretty okay after his operation but then he just passed."

And we talked some more, about what was going on, but nobody knew anything and she told me to call Mom, so I hung up with her and called my mom, who said they were driving the next day to Portland and would find out when the services were being held, but she thought they would be held right away. I asked her how she was, and she said she was kind of okay, and that grampa was eighty-eight years old and had lived a full life, and his alzheimer's had been so bad lately that he really didn't have a high quality of life, and really it was all for the best. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she'd been crying, though, and I wished that I could be there for her.

We hung up, and I walked into the food court. I thought the only fast food still open was Popeye's, but all they had to sell there was Burger King's breakfast, so I bought some dollar hashbrowns. I sat down to eat and do some writing, and to think about things. I thought about whether I wanted to go to the funeral or not, how much it would cost, and if it was even possible. I tried to think of a way of flying there without letting everybody know that I'd been hitchhiking. I wondered what to do, and whether my brother or sisters would go. I wondered how things would change now that he was gone. I wished that I had known him better somehow. I bought some more hashbrowns and ate them too, and the grease kind of collected on the bottom of my stomach and I could feel it sitting there. I wished I felt more.

Finally as I was going to the restroom Brett came wandering back in and ready to hit the road again. I told him about my grampa, he asked if there was anything I could do, I explained about how it was all for the best, and how his mind was deteriorating, and how for his last operation my cousins had to watch over him to make sure he didn't yank out his IV's. And then it got kind of quiet, and I asked Brett if it was ok if I went to the back of the cab for a nap, because he'd offered earlier, and he said it was fine, and I slept some.

Just to let you know, just so that the only thing you know about my Grampa isn't that his mind was gone, he was a WWII and Korean war veteran, serving as a pastor in both and providing comfort to a lot of men in uncomfortable positions. He started over 30 churches around the country, was a child of the depression, and always had a drawer full of coupons to scrimp a penny. He loved to eat at McDonald's, and brought a home-grown tomato in his pocket every time he went, to slice and put into his sandwich. "He was the only person I knew," somebody told me later, "who could buy a 25 cent hamburger at McDonald's and turn it into a Big Mac." He was a kind man and he always greeted me, "Hello, friend."

posted by Cuento  [5:10 AM]

Gary, Indiana

What day was this? Probably September 1st, two-thousand three!

When I woke up the next day I met most of Matt's family, showered, and ate some Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. I looked around Matt's attic room and was happy to see it was still very much a high school room, with clothes on the floor and lots of knick-knacks and toys, lots of posters and collages, lots of clutter and lots of junk. Oh! How Joyous! I tried to take in as much as I could, but it was like the Smithsonian.

Matt drove me to the train station by his house. I was to take a train back to Chicago, from there walk to the bus station, and from there take an $8 Greyhound ticket into Gary, Indiana, about 20 miles or so away, to meet up with Brett again at a truckstop there. Well, it was Labor Day, so the trains were on their Sunday schedules, so the train was an hour late, so I missed my 1:30 bus, so I had to wait until 4 to leave Chicago for Indiana. The whole time I was praying that Brett would wait for me in Gary, because I really wanted the long trek east that he had promised. He told me that if I was late he would wait for me, but you never know, do you?

The train ride was interesting as all train rides are, getting to see the backyards of the country, but the green-tinted windows seemed to drown out most of the color, with the dreary day taking out all the rest. I took some pictures with Jen's Lomo, and wished I got to see Chicago on clearer days.

On the bus ride to Gary I met a kid who was a junior at Purdue, and I told him about my trip and I don't know if he believed it right away. He said he lived in a communal dorm place that was like a frat but wasn't. They all live together as part of a club, and have activities with other girls' clubs, and go by greek letters.

"But you don't have like initiations and stuff?" I asked.

"No, we do," he said.

"Is it coed? Or..."

"No, it's only males."

"So it's not like a fraternity how?"

"Well, we cook and clean for ourselves. And our only dues are what we have to pay for rent and food and cleaning supplies."

Ah, I see. Chris, his name was Chris, well, I told him I'd never been to Illinois before the day before (and he understood what I meant by that) and I told him how much it sucked that when you got a speeding ticket they took your license away.

"Do they do that?" he asked me, confused.

"Well that's what my friends were telling me. Yeah, cuz she had to use her ticket all night as an ID."

"I don't think they do that."

"Really? You sure?"

"Yeah. But oh, if you have a AAA card they can take that instead of your license."

...But I thought he just said they didn't take your license... Anyway.

I told Chris I was jobless in LA and he suggested I do what he did that summer, which was to stock and order different displays in hardware stores. Apparently big stores like Home Depot don't stock most of their own shelves. The companies that distribute the tools and materials and things pay for their product to be stocked, and put away nicely and such. So Chris would just drive to one specific store, and stock and arrange all of their screws and nails only, then the next day a different store, and so on and so on, until the next week, when he'd probably have to start all over again. "The stores get messed up pretty fast."

"So the Home Depot people in the orange coats don't do all that?" I asked.

"No, their job is just to be experts about everything."

I asked Chris what the wierd igloo-shaped huts on the side of the freeway were, because I kept seeing them around the Midwest. He said he thought they were observatories, for looking at stars or something. I didn't believe him.

"I don't believe you," I said.

"Well, I..." he said. "I think my dad told me that. Yeah, I think they're for looking at stars."

No way.

Well, Chris fell asleep, and I fell to writing, and soon enough we were in another dreary city, another dreary state, and I said goodbye to Chris and stepped off into Gary.

When you Go Greyhound, the first thing you notice are the people. I'm used to lots of different types of transportation, but bus people by far are the craziest. I've sat next to crack addict rehabbers, smelled the puke of men with frankenstein stitches down their forehead, and been driven by busdrivers who have pulled over on the side of the middle of nowhere and decided not to drive us anymore. And this is what you come to expect.

Well, when we got to the bus stop in Gary, they were the same bus people, but somehow I knew right away that these were the most upstanding citizens of Gary. The town was just that rundown. But hell, I decided to scope it out anyway.

I wanted to find a bus, or see maybe if I could hitchhike to the truckstop or something. Well, I took a turn around the block and headed right back to the bus station. Every building was the most decrepit piece of crap, it looked like where neighborhoods go to die. Gang graffiti covered everything, and the souls of dead Crips stated at me through the crooked teeth wood paneling of the houses. It was a whole neighborhood of ghost houses, the ones kids pelt with rocks and dare their friends to go into. I remembered the devil dog dream and walked back to the bus station as fast as I could without looking too much like a victim.

When I got back I heaved a huge sigh of relief and called about 4 taxi places before one finally answered. It was too expensive, and too far, so then I called another, and they could come right away. "Just sit tight though," said the lady. "The last 3 taxis I sent out there couldn't find their passengers." Well hell. I'd keep my eye our for damn sure!

I sat watching for a long time, and finally someone came in and called my name. They came from the back door--maybe that's why they never found anybody. I gladly picked up my bag and followed him. But when he got in the taxi, there was already a driver there, and this guy got in Shotgun.

Uh...what? Well, whatever, just couldn't be worse than the area I was in. Click, slam, door shut with me inside.

The driver drove trucks during the week, sometimes Wide Loads, and just helped out with the taxi thing on weekends. His friend and him didn't seem to get too many calls--in between rides they played video games back at the house. Truckdriver got 30 cents a mile for driving trucks, pretty standard, and 50 cents for driving Wide Loads. Not bad. Sometimes his wife drove as an escort for the Wide Loads (those are the cars that drive before and behind the truck with the "WIDE LOAD" warnings on their roofs) and for that she got 75 cents a mile. Which didn't make sense to me, because how is driving a regular car harder than driving a Wide Load big rig? But that's the way it is.

"Yeah, that's a pretty bad neighborhood," said the driver. He was overweight with a blond buzzcut-his friend was skinnier with a blond buzzcut, dressed after Eminem. "I wouldn't like to get stuck around there."

"Yeah," said his friend. "It's pretty bad." As we kept driving through Gary, they pointed out the rough neighborhoods, with frequency, and all of the areas we passed seemed to be "bad," "really bad," and "not so bad."

"Just don't leave me off in any of the really bad ones," I said, and they laughed, but I was being serious.

"Yeah, my dispatch told me there's a white guy callin from the bus station. 'Hurry and pick him up!'" Which made me wonder some about the way things was, but soon enough we were at the truckstop and I had to look for my savior Brett to take me far far away from the land of Gary. I was late by a couple of hours, but God thank traffic, for once, because so was he.

posted by Cuento  [3:11 AM]