Upwards and On Words

Los Angeles, CA

2003-11-28T04:35:00.000-08:00

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

Long Beach

2003-11-28T04:11:00.000-08:00

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.

NYC

2003-11-28T03:04:00.000-08:00

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.

NYC

2003-10-22T03:37:00.000-07:00

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.

NYC

2003-10-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

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!

New York City

2003-10-07T02:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Philadelphia

2003-09-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Somewhere in Ohio

2003-09-18T05:10:00.000-07:00

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."

Gary, Indiana

2003-09-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

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.

Chicago, IL

2003-09-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

This was Sunday, aug 31st.

Chicago was grey and drizzly and the top of the Sears tower had disappeared where it pierced the sky. The bus station was crowded, but I found on the wall map where the Sears tower was located (I knew I'd be able to see it from afar, but not if I was right under it) and began walking.

When I finally found the entrance, no signs were posted about how much it cost, and I didn't want to stand in line just to find out, so I asked the first people I saw come out who looked for sure to speak English.

"Doesn't matter," said a heavy-set middle-aged man from Kentucky. "Hour and a half wait. We went in, just to come back out again. Pssh. Hour and a half wait." Which when he said it in his Kinnnntcky! accent sounded like, "Arrgh andahaff WAIT!"

I asked him again how much it cost, because I might as well have all the facts, and he asked his son and it was $9.50, which wasn't worth it on this cloudy day.

"Arrgh andahaff WAIT!" he barked at everyone that had started to line up. "Arrgh andahaff WAIT!" he told anyone walking towards the line. "Arrgh andahaff WAIT!" he told anyone who just happened to be walking in that general direction. We were pretty far down the street by then- I'm not sure if they had any idea what he was talking about.

"Ohh Harris," his wife finally called, "They's can find out for theymselves."

I walked to a payphone, called my friend Matt who lives in a suburb of Chicago, Ferris Bueller-style, and left a message. Then I sat down to eat at a Subway, update my journal somewhat (I'd fallen a bit behind) and then set out again. I found a really swanky hotel called Allegro, took some pictures and grabbed a map of the city, set out for the Art Institute of Chicago. Found the Chicago Cultural Center on the way, and they were showing a photographer I really liked! Sebastiao Salgado! But I strayed too long in the visitor's center, and by the time I tried to go up and see the photographs, it was 4:45 and they wouldn't let anyone else up. Drat! I haven't had a watch this whole entire trip, and this one instance was where it really bit me in the ass.

It was too late now to go to the Art Institute either, and both would be closed until Tuesday because of Labor Day. I walked in the drizzle to the Art Institute anyway, to see if they'd let me in under the wire, and because I had nothing else to do, but it was a no go, guards standing at every entry.

From there I tried to go back to a building I'd seen on the way titled "Chicago Public Library" in big Greek letters, but then I realized that had just been where they'd housed the Cultural Center, so I walked on to an Old Navy store where I could go to the restroom and call Matt again. He said he'd be another hour- had to go home and change, then drive into the city. I sat awhile and then planned how to get from Chicago further East, made a few more calls, studied my maps, and rested a bit. I was pretty tired now of walking in the rain all day, especially with the huge pack on my back, but looking at my maps and realizing pretty soon I'd get to move from "Central States" to "North Eastern States" definitely recharged my batteries. I was over two-thirds of the way there! I also realized the Omaha-Chicago bus took me a lot farther in distance than I thought it was (484 miles), so when the final hitchhiking totals come in, I'll have to subtract those.

I walked a bit more to the "Elephant & Castle," an English pub, to put down my gear, write a bit more, and wait for Matt. I talked with the bartender some, told him what I was doing, and I think at first he had an English accent but then later he didn't. He was going to school at Columbia there in Chicago, same as Matt.

Matt walked in and we had a drink and talked for a while. He tried to get in touch with Siobhan, who was also supposed to hang out with us tonight. Matt and Siobhan ahd both gone to USC with me their freshman year, but had since transferred back to Columbia to study film. It'd been about a year since I'd seen Matt--probably 3 or more since I'd seen Siobhan.

Matt and I went back to his car, a Fire Emergency Vehicle given to him by his Grampa, who used to be the Fire Chief of all of Chicago, or maybe just of a certain area, but certainly high up there. The car is exactly like an 80's style police car except it's all red instead of black and white. It even still has the searchlight mounted on it, and it smells like old leather, and God I love riding in it. Mat and I set off to the Navy Pier to show me all around, but turns out Matt is a little confused by "roads," "highways," and "roadsigns," as well as "visual markers," so we headed straight past it and raced along Lake Michigan, changing lanes, making U-turns, backtracking and retracing our paths until we found we were nowhere, everywhere, and indeed some places and not others all at once.

"That's where I got mugged the second time," said Matt, as we passed a dip in the road under an overpass. The second time? He'd been mugged?

"Well, not mugged exactly, they didn't really end up taking anything. But they tried." Some of you may have heard this story before, but some of don't. Some of you all might get wit this, but some of you won't (so Let Me Clear My Throat).

Matt missed the last train to Schaumburg (or wherever the hell he lives) after catching an opening night, and since the train stationers wouldn't let him stay there for the night, he bought a Snapple and a muffin from the 7-11 and started walking.

The wrong direction. He ran into 3 black guys who crossed his path (did they have to be black? No, but that's the way the story was told to me) and did a Larry, Curly, and Moe right in front of him (they all stopped and bumped into each other, one after the other) and Matt decided he'd probably like to change directions. So he keeps wandering and walking through the night (the wrong way) until about an hour later he walkes to that dip in the road he pointed out to me, which he realizes dips enough from the main road that no one can see him, he can't turn left or right, and which ends in a dead end, and is the perfect place to get mugged.

This he realizes as behind him he hears the heavy footfalls of someone rushing straight toward him. He turns around, and one of the guys from before is running, straight toward him, from twenty yards away.

"Hello There!" Matt yells at him.

The man stops running. "Hello," he says.

"So how ya doing?" asks Matt.

"Uh. Allright I guess. Where you going?" The man puts his hands inside his jacket, like he has a gun, but his jacked is so tight Matt can see that he's not packin.

"Nowhere," says Matt. Tick tock tick.

Tick tock tick.

"Ok this is a stick-up!" yells the man. "Give me all your money!" and Matt laughs because who says things like that anymore?

Well, the man's two other friends hop out from the side of the overpass from nowhere, and things have gotten a little more serious, so Matt reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and hands his mugger a dollar.

"What's this?" asks the man.

"That's a dollar," says Matt.

"I know. Why are you giving it to me?"

"It's all the money I have."

"You don't have any credit cards, or something like that?" The mugger is upset.

"I have a library card," offers Matt.

The muggers go through his backpack, and Matt offers them his muffin and his college textbook. "You can take it and sell it. It's pretty expensive." They scoff at this and brush away the muffin. "We don't want your damn muffin." Matt shrugs and begins to eat it. He's still really scared and nervous.

"All you got is a fuckin dollar?" says his mugger. "We don't want your damn dollar."

"I told him O.K.," Matt says to me, "And I reached up and took it back."

"You took back the dollar?" I ask!

"He said he didn't want it!" So all the muggers left, and so that he wouldn't be following right behind them, because there was no place else to go, he waited for a while, then walked back to the train station, where he sat and pounded on the glass until finally someone let him sit inside.

"So what about the first time you were mugged?" I ask.

"Oh yeah, that was in New York, and I got pickpocketed by a hooker," and he explained all about it to me, but hell, Matt's my friend, I'm not gonna steal all his stories.

We drove along the coast some more, and then back again, and then spotted the Chicago Jazz Festival striking up with lights and people and tents, and I asked Matt if we couldn't go to that, and he said it was fine. We finally parked the car--Matt wouldn't let me help pay for the excorborant fee of $10--and walked on in, bought 10 food tickets for $7 (it was odd like that) I had me two steak tacos and Matt, he had himself a cheeseburger. We watched the Jazz a bit on big screens about a football field's length away from the stage, ate, and met up with Siobhan, who said yes when Matt wanted to go to Buddy Guy's, a blues bar, not too far.

Buddy Guy's was $10 cover, but with the heart and soul that was pouring out by the band inside, they must have sold some souls to the devil to have made any profit.

The place was dark, rows and rows of tables and the place had a real open atmosphere, not like most places where the band plays against a far wall. Here the band played on a stage cut right out in the middle, with lots of space all around, and everybody had the best view. We played pool most of the night, and to not pay full attention to that great Blues Band, and be priveleged enough to just listen in when I wanted to, I felt the richest man on earth.

I won two games, and Matt won one, and then we heaed over to Wiley's (?) to talk about what we all wanted to do, which was film. Theyboth had two semesters left, but I was already out there in the world, and I told them it was scary but didn't emphasize just how scary it was. They're going to have to deal with that on their own sweet time. Siobhan's doing a lot of producing these days, and I gave her my chicken litmus test for independent producers: Would you pay for a $400/day chicken wrangler for your movie, or buy a $10 chicken from Chinatown and simply return it when you were done? "I'd just try to get them to write the chicken out of the script," said Siobhan. "I mean, is it essential to the story?" Well, I'm in the school of thought that ALL chickens are essential to EVERY story, and if anything movies should all have more chickens, but Siobhan impressed me with her determinism and know-how.

Siobhan had just gotten a speeding ticket recently, and apparently in Illinois they take your license away to make sure you appear in court, so everywhere we went she had to present her ticket, a picture ID, and her sad sad story. We got in everywhere we wanted to go, but it was pretty much up to the doorman's disgression each time, and whether they took pity or not.

"Wait, why do they take your license away?" I asked.

"To make sure you go to court, and pay your fine," answered Matt.

"But wouldn't you do that anyway?"

"I guess some don't."

"But wait, what happens if your court date isn't set for a long time?"

"My court date isn't for another month," said Siobhan. "I could go get a state-issued ID but I've been too busy with all these films."

"That sucks man."

"They don't take your license away when you get a ticket in California?" asked Matt.

"Why the FUCK would they do that?" I tell him. "God, that would be annoying." I was completely aghast. Illinois sucks. Apparently it's legal to drive without your license if you have the speeding ticket with you (yeah that makes a lot of sense) although you shouldn't get pulled over again because you've learned your lesson, right? Matt said in olden days they stapled the ticket copy to your license when they took it, so when you got it backthere'd be staple bumps on the back, and when they pulled you over the cop would feel along the back of your license and could tell how many times you'd been speeding. Tricky!

"Now they just scan it through the computer, and know your whole life story," said Matt. Yeah, I liked the other way better.

Eventually we all got tired, and Siobhan even excused herself to leave, but we all stayed talking til 1:45 anyway. The bars in Chicago close at 2 and 4, depending, and this one closed at 2. So we said goodbye to Siobhan, and Mat and I drove about an hour to his house, where I met his cat and dog, wrote some on this site, and went to bed.

Omaha, Nebraska

2003-09-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

Again, Sat. Aug. 30th

Antonio drove by me again on his way out, and waved to me, and I waved goodbye, but he called me over and when I got to his window this is what he said: "C'mon man, I'll take you to Omaha."

"You sure?" I asked. I only ask "You sure?" when I'm sure they're sure.

"Yeah," he said. "Hop in."

Yee! So I hopped in with my bag and a big YES! carryin on inside my mind. "You didn't have to, you know," I told him. "I'm not going to refuse you, hell no, but you've already done more than enough."

"I just felt sorry for you man, like I was doing a halfass job, gettin you half of the way there. I usually don't pick up hitchhikers, but I saw you man, and I was like, it must suck to be waiting out there. Yeah, I'll take you into Omaha."

And glorious soul that he was, he did.

Showed me all around, in fact, where the bars and pubs were, where the park was, and then dropped me off at the Greyhound station. I bought me a $62 ticket for Chicago leaving at 4 am, packed up my bag in a locker at the station, put on a nice shirt and headed out for a night on the town, Omaha-style.

The first place I walked to was the Westin Hotel. Or the Marriott. Something like that. I was checking if I could sneak into the pool later at 2 am, waste time until my bus left, but the pool shut down at 10. So I took the elevator up to the top floor (19) but the top floor wasn't working so I went to the 18th, and walked up a flight.

Turns out, the 19th floor isn't finished yet. Pieces of lumber, carpenter's tools, and dust litter the floor, I'm all alone, and the skyline of downtown Omaha shines in through the window and bounces all around my head. I walk around a bit, take some long exposure pictures with Jen's Lomo camera, stare out across the lights, then walk back down to the 18th. It was time to rock n' roll.

The first club I went to, I could tell they thought it was going to be a lot cooler than it was. Music pumping, DJ spinning, disco lights turning, it was a big ass place and hundreds of people could fit there. There were maybe like 10. Lonely souls, sipping their drinks, not talking to anyone, sitting in the dark.

I hate showing my ID to the doorman and just walking right back out, so I decided I might as well check out the place. A cool fishtank and some other crap, so I took some pictures. And then I saw it, shimmering in the distance, a sign that could solve all my worries forever in the blink of an eye, the shudder of a heartbeat:

DOLLAR-FIFTY BEERS.

Holy Shit! I couldn't believe my eyes. Couldn't be true. I saddled up to the bar, sure enough that's how much someone was handing over.

"I'll have a bud," I tell the bartender.

"That'll be a dollar fifty," she tells me.

"HOLY FUCKIN SHIT! DO you KNOW HOW FUCKING CHEAP THAT IS???" Ok, the last statement was all in my head, but I'm sure she saw it in my eyes, and when she handed me a 16oz longneck bottle I nearly fainted.

Allright, so I headed upstairs and saw three girls playing pool with a guy, I figured I might want to introduce myself if I had the balls, and before I could stop myself, I was. I asked if the club was going to be like that all night, or if it was going to get better, and this short black girl who kind of looks like a young Oprah answers me back that it sorta depends, cuz sometimes it builds and sometimes it doesn't. So I tell them I'm hitchhiking, which turns out is a great opening line. I meet everyone and we decide to go somewhere else.

After I have a few more dollar fifty beers, that is.

The Oprah girl is named Shawnee (sp?), and she used to work with Liz, who now works in a bank with Jenny and Bart. Liz can catch quarters between her breasts, Bart laughs at everything I say (and looks like a Doug or Greg. Who the hell is named Bart? Almost as bad as naming you kid Dwayne), and Jenny dances really funny and I can't tell if she's doing it on purpose or on accident but it tickles the hell outta me and I think it's great. Before we leave, Liz and Jenny start twirling the pool cues around like Ninja Turtles because they used to be flag girls, and it really freaks the hell outta me cuz the dollar fifties are starting to add up and the cues are getting a little close. We start walking.

We walked to a car garage, and as we stood outside a red sedan I realized we weren't going to walk to wherever we were going. "I have to be back at the bus station by 4," I said. "Actually by 3:30, cuz it leaves at 4."

"In Liz-time that means 3," said Bart.

"Liz! I need to be back by 3!" I yelled to the driver.

"Yeah yeah yeah. We'll get you back, don't worry."

We stopped at Liz's house because she needed money, or ID, or something. I used her restroom, which I have to say had a very nice Coca-Cola motif. She comes back out in a completely different outfit.

"Liz, are you wearing a bra?" asks Bart.

"Hon, if I wasn't wearing a bra it would have knocked you out by now, believe me."

We drive seemingly forever and I'm sure they're taking me to the country, gonna hogtie me in a cornfield, then...well, I don't know what after that, and I think about starting to begin to get worried, but the dollar fifties tell me that I'm too uptight, and this is an adventure after all, isn't it?

I tell them all how beers in LA all cost about $5 or $6, and that's for a 12oz, and they all think I'm lying. Buying a girl a drink out there is an investment! I say. Altho even with dollar fifty beers, it's not like I bought them none. Bart, god bless'im, is laughing at every single joke I crack, and I was talking some wild dollar fifty shit, and the girls all laugh too. I wanted to fold up Bart and put him in my pocket and take him everywhere I go.

We get to Bourbon Street, a club on Dodge Road (False Advertising!) and it's a pretty hopping meat market, where all the girls are dressed to the skinny, the guys are all scheming, and everybody's only thinkin of one thing. Excellent. We danced, we talked, beers were $2.50 at this place (Highway Robbery!) and if you've never danced on a spinning floor, then I...well...I guess you haven't done that then. By the end of the night my head was spinning too, and all I was thinking were 2 things, one after the other after the other, and repeat. Those 2 things were "What the fuck am I doing in Omaha?" and "Dollar fifty beers." Unbelievable.

Somehow we all wound up back at the car, headed to Taco Bell, and I drank all the water I could get my hands on (thanks Jenny for your water too) and Liz drove us back to the Greyhound. We said our goodbyes, I thanked them, and unlocked my bad and waited a coupla hours til my bus left, and it was SO hard not to fall asleep, and the time ticked by like watched pots, and finally they let me on the bus, and I fell asleep and woke up in Chicagoland. It was a nine-hour trip.

Gretna, Nebraska

2003-09-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

Also Saturday, August 30th.

It was kind of a Mazda Z28, I think, that picked me up. Is that a real car? Anyway, behind the wheel was Antonio, a darkskinned cool kat who was on his way to a Gretna truck stop to pick up some grub. Antonio looked about 25, told me he was like 37, and is workin at a pawn shop. He's a musician and is just finishing up his demo right now and he's gonna start playing places and gettin his name out there.

He's stretchin it wider, stretchin it wider, stretchin it wider.

We cruised with the windows down and the sun setting behind us, and I told Antonio what I was about, and he told me what he was about. We talked about travelling, about writing, about making music, about living with no limits. I kept peeking over his shoulder at the sun shooting into flames on the horizon, lighting all the clouds afire in beautiful shades of purple, orange, red, blue, and all the colors in between. He said that for his birthday his friend asked him to go to Chicago and that he'd pay for the hotel. So shoot, they went. "We had a blast," he said. I think travel, and experiences probably make the best presents.

Antonio used to travel a lot for the company he used to work for, selling children's toys in stands across the country. I'm guessing for carnivals and street festivals, but I don't know. "You wouldn't believe how much money you can make in selling anything for children. I was makin about $30 an hour. I got tired of travelling too. Fed up. And then after 9-11," he said, making a thumbs down motion and leaking air through his lips like an old tire, "Peeeowww. Nothin."

He dropped me off in Gretna, I told him to keep in contact if he was ever in LA, he gave me his cell #, and he went inside to grub and I went out to the road. Only about 20 more miles to Omaha. I was almost there!

Ashland, Nebraska

2003-09-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

This was also Saturday, August 30th.

There were so many trucks in Grand Island that I was sure I wouldn't have to wait long. I was happy. I took little naps in the grass while waiting, and sang to myself, just full to the brim on life. Sometimes that happens to me, and there's no particular reason for it, I just happen to notice that I'm feeling pretty good, I get happy that I'm feeling good, I get happier knowing that I'm happy, and I get happier still because I'm even noticing it, and it just keeps building off itself until I'm just the happiest clam in the sea. I started singing songs, from Flaming Lips' Fight Test, to Presidents of the US' I Saw You to Charlie Hunter Quartet feat. Mos Def, Creole. I sange iwth my mouth closed when the trucks pulled thru, so they wouldn't think I was crazy.

And then slowly, slowly, my enthusiasm started to bleed away, and instead of thinking "Holy Fuck! I'm in Grand Island, Nebraska! How the hell did I get here?!?" I started to think, "What the fuck am I doing in Grand Island, and how the fuck did I get here." All the drivers motioned to me that they were going West, not East, and I started to get really irritated with women. As far as hitchhiking is concerned, they are completely useless. They can't hitchhike, because they're women, and they can't pick people up, because they're women. A lot of truckers couldn't pick me up because they were women, and a lot of others couldn't pick me up because their wives were riding with them, so they didn't have any space. A lot of truckers told me their wives would kill them if they knew they were picking up hitchhikers. A lot of times I'd try to hitch a ride with a car or truck before I saw it was a woman driving, and they'd look at me, smile, and raise up their arms like "Whelp! What can I do? I'm a woman!" I started to curse them, there on the little tuft of grass outside the truck stop byt the "We have the lowest-priced cigarettes GUARANTEED!" sign. They were ruining my chances, daggammit.

And I started to get a little bitter, tried to come up with new plans to catch a ride, please don't let me stay in Grand Island for the night, and I just got fed up, and started for the freeway.

A car pulls over! I kind of wait to see if they're really stopping for me, cuz in Victorville I started running after a car and right before I got there it pulld away again. Minchea bastards! But then a door opens, and a head turns to me, so I start to jog toward them. That's how I met the Nielson family, and they gave me a ride to Ashland.

Neal and April Nielson (holy crap I just realized his name was Neal Nielson!) and their daughter Something (I forget her name...) were just the nicest folks, on their way back home after visiting Neal's folks in Grand Island. April got out of the car as I ran up and offered me shotgun, which I refused as being too nice a gesture, but then I realized their daughter Something was in the back seat, and I understood.

I want to say the Nielson family members were true cornfed Nebraskans, but what does that mean? Just that they eat corn, or is something else implied there? I don't know what it means. I could tell by the way they talked and what they talked about that they were Nebraskers por vida, for life, and I knew their answer was going to be "born and raised" but sometimes you just can't assume things, so I asked Neal how long he'd lived in Nebraska.

"Born and raised!" he said with a slow Nebraskan drawl. "My wife and me, we were born in Grand Island, both found jobs around Lincoln, so we moved around there." When you read that sentence, take twice as long to read it as it would normally take, and that's his accent. His girl Something talked real sweetly tho, it seemed so different I wondered what it meant. His wife sat in the back seat reading her novel, Something sat listening intently, and Neal sat back and told me about Everything.

I hope from what I've told you so far, you don't think this was a Triple-S family (Stupid, Slow, and Simple) because they weren't. Neal's an electrician and his wife works in a Children's Hospital, but both are trying to get into the Inter-net business, teaching others how to buy all their goods from the dot coms, and somehow that is going to make them a lot of money. I haven't checked it out yet, but it's www.WebBuisnessOpportunity.com if you're interested. Hmm. I wonder if "business" is just misspelled on the card he gave me, or that's the actual website, and if the Neilsons know it's spelled wrong. Anyway, maybe I'll check it out when I get home, and maybe we'll all be rich with Nielson Enterprises.

"I've never lived outside Nebraska. I've traveled outside it, been a lot of places. This internet opportunity has meetings and training sessions in Tulsa, Des Moines, all over. But sometimes, you'd be just as excited to see what's in your own back yard. People drive on the freeway think they've seen Nebraska, shoot, we just get a spur in us and we travel down gravel roads, you'd be surprised where we end up. Once we got on a spur and went all the way to South Dakota! Found the most beautiful little lake."

I asked what they did for fun. All three of them laughed at me. "There ain't much to do in Nebraska!" said...hmm, I forget now who said it. Maybe they all did. "I like to fish," said Neal.

But they all lies. There are fun things to do. For her H.S. graduation gift, Neal got Something an flying lesson, and she even got to handle the controls and buzz right by her house. "She thought we was taking her to her gramma's, but then I turned the corner, and I said you see that red plane over there? That's what you're goin to be flyin today!" I'm thinking I might give my daughter the same gift when I have kids. The sky's the limit. What else could be so fitting for graduating high school?

The Nielsons let me off at a small truckstop in Ashland. The Nebraskan Cornhuskers had just beat Oklahoma State there in Lincoln, and a lot of huskers were driving back to Omaha, so I planned to hitch a ride with one of them. I pulled out the other half of my Subway sandwich, but had to stuff it in my bag again right quick, cuz here was my next ride!

Grand Island, Nebraska (cont)

2003-09-05T03:21:00.000-07:00

The porn star was actually his friend's story. His friend, also a trucker, who he runs into quite a lot, called him up excitedly and bursts, "GUESS WHO I JUST DROVE!!! REBECCA THE XXX PORN STAR!" Turns out she just radioed for a ride on the CB, just cuz she wanted to ride in a big rig. "I want to ride in a BIG truck," she said. "I'm your Man!" radioed back Brett's friend. So she rode next to him all the way, and he couldn't be happier than a clam. She signed her picture, his hats, nearly everything he had. And gave him her website, www.rebeccaxxxpornstar.com or something like that. Funny business.

Brett always asks everyone he picks up if they have any weapons, drugs, or alcohol with them (except he didn't ask with me) and he thought the drug runner might have lied. Only a 40-minute trip but she quickly disclosed to him that a man gave her drugs, bought her a bus ticket, and she ran the drugs to wherever she was going, and had to hitch a ride back to collect her pay. Which she'd been doing for four years. Brett was scared she'd been lying about not possessing drugs, because if he got caught with a $20 joint in his cab, he'd lose his license and truck and never be able to drive again. But I figure she was on the way back. So they'd be safe unless she'd kept a little summa summa for herself.

We talked a lot about race, nationality, and the country's problems. Brett blamed Bush's bad decision-making on Colin Powell. He agreed with me that immigrants always get the shaft in this country, and he thought they should bring all their families over and open the borders, but he didn't like that they were sending so much of their money to relatives back home. He has racist friends who say they hate "niggers" and he tries to change their mind but they don't realize that you can’t judge a group by certain individuals. He really likes black women and he has no idea why.

Brett's only 29 but already he's owned and sold a dairy farm. He bought into it with his uncle, and thought since they were splitting finances 50/50 that they were splitting the responsibility and the decision-making the same way. The Uncle, however, was thinking that Brett would do all the work that he told him to do, since he was the elder. "Yeah, we used to get into fist fights about it."

Most people when they say that don't mean it literally, but with Brett I started to wonder, so I asked him.

"Yeah, like actual physical fist fights. There were times when he didn't like what I said and he'd just come over and smack me, throw me to the floor. Finally there was this one time that, well see, this is what happened. He had some horses, and what he'd do is he'd use our hay to feed his horses. And you know, that's not in our budget, that's half of my money going to feed his horses. So he goes on vacation and he doesn't say nothin, he just expects me to feed his horses. Well I'M not gonna feed HIS horses with MY hay! So I didn't do nothin, and he, I'm sitting at my mom's house, boy he opens the door and he just starts swingin, clocks me in the jaw. So after that I was just like, no more a this, and I said either you can buy me out or we're selling the whole thing, and so he ended up buying my half."

But the most interesting story Brett told, and the most powerful, was about how when he was 17 he was working on an engine with his friend and while he was under it the fuel tank exploded all over him and he caught on fire. "And lemme tell you, they always teach that stop, drop, and roll, but that don't work for gas fires. You roll around that just snuffs them out and then they re-ignite again when you roll back around. You gotta either smother them out and wrap a blanket around you or cover yourself in water. Shiiit. I was rolling all over the place, but finally I threw myself in a mud puddle and that's what put me out. Except my legs were still goin, but by that time my buddy'd found a hose and put em out. And then I was just standing there, and he puked, all over the ground, and I never understood why but then later he told me. Cuz I was standin there, and I didn't know how bad I was, but he said it was the smell that got him, and it smelled real bad of all that burning flesh. I think he felt real bad about all that for a while, like it shoulda been him or it was all his fault or somethin. It wasn't nobody's fault. And I kinda praise the Lord that it was me and not him, cuz I weighed about 260 then and dropped down to like 175, cuz your body goes into shock, your mind is over it, but your body's still in shock, and you just lose a tremendous amount of weight. My buddy was about 150 at the time and he just never woulda lived, dropping all that weight. So some things, you don't like em, but if they have to happen then that's the best way. You know, some things are bad but there's some good in em."

"That hospital was the worst. The nurses, none of them liked their job, they're working horrible hours, I mean a couple of them were nice, real warm, but the others were just cruddy. This one lady, she didn't like me, and even tho I asked her every time, she always put the remote by the arm that was all bandaged up, so I could never change the channel. And whenever she scrubbed me, well what they're supposed to do is scrub a little, ask you how you're doin, they scrub a little more. Well, she'd just start scrubbing, real hard and she wouldn't ever stop. Another nurse had to physically restrain her before she stopped. So I finally complained to my mother that time, and she talked to the doctor, and that nurse, well she took a vacation. The day I was getting out was the day she came back."

The way they do skin grafts is they have to take the skin from somewhere else on your body. And then what they do is poke it full of holes so that they can get it to stretch and get the most out of it. Then they staple it in place, and hopefully it all grows back. Sometimes it doesn't take, and it turns blue and dies, and they have to try it all over again. Brett pointed out the parts on his body that'd been replaced, on his chin, arm, and leg, but the chin I couldn't really tell with his stubble, and the arm I had noticed getting in his cab, but honestly it just looked like he had rested his arm too long on a bumpy surface. Like when you fall asleep on carpet and you have all the divots on your skin when you wake up. Those were where the holes had been poked.

"When you're in the burn unit, you learn everything about burns." One guy got burned so bad the only place they could take new skin from was his head. "Your whole body has three layers of skin over everything, except for your head, which has ten, and your hands and feet, which are just more callused." They used up all the layers of this guy's head to grow back the skin on the rest of his body, but they didn't have enough. But it only takes 10 days to grow back a layer of skin on your head, so every 10 days he'd grow back another layer and they'd take it off and use it somewhere else. "So by the end of it all his head was lop-sided from all that harvesting." I felt bad for the guy, but better a misshapen head, I guess, than no skin.

"But burn care has come so far. How far they've come in the rest of medicine in 300 years, that's how far burn care has come in the last 10 years. It used to be that they'd wrap you up in gauze, and if you didn't make it on your own there was nothing they could do for you."

Brett after he was released form the hospital was supposed to wear this tight nylon-type stuff over the rest of his body, and a mask over his face, for up to a year or two. "I wore it for about 2 weeks, after that I was just like forget this, it was just too hard." What the nylon does is keep the skin restricted and smooth so that scars don't form. In the burn unit they would have to scrub off all the scabs that formed every day, so that there would be lest scarring. "So every day, they had to scrub off all the scabs again with a wire brush, you know like they use for horses? Every single day. And they give you morphine, but with the legal limit what it is, they might as well not give it to you, because it's like 'Aw, it feels good' for a second and then right back to the pain."

Brett's pain threshold is now incredible. "Nothing, nothing will ever be that painful again. When you're burned, all your nerves are exposed to the air, because that's where they all are, in your skin. It was more pain than I would ever inflict on anybody, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." His friend recently dropped a steel beam on his toe, cracked it wide open. Toe was bleeding all over everywhere, he didn't even notice. "I just looked at it, pssh! It's a toe! I got nine more of 'em!"

"And I hate hospitals now. They're just a big rip off. They made me brush my teeth every day, and every time you use one of those little bottles of toothpaste, you know like you take camping? They throw it away and open a whole new one the next day. And you get charged $8 a day for every single one of those $1 bottles of toothpaste. Shoot. They had this psychiatrist? Guy barely spoke one word of English and I could never tell what he said. He comes in each week to see me, asks me how I'm doin, and whether I say "Good," "Horrible," or "I'm gonna kill myself," he says "O.K." and walks back out. $100, every single visit, and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm one of those guys now who'll step on a rusty nail and die from it, cuz I'll never set one foot in a hospital again. Just one big rip-off. I got an ingrown toenail, and I just cut it out myself. Sure, it hurt, and I was bleeding everywhere, but I didn't get no $400 cleaning fees."

Brett was lucky because his skin grew back so fast. They didn't know that at first, and they waited a day after his 1st skin graft and when they tried to take it off it had already grown into the gauze. So he had to soak it in the bathtub for a while, then rip it back off again.

"You can survive a burn accident," said Brett, "But you're burned for life." Brett hit the bottle pretty hard after the accident, and it got even worse when he went to college. He was drinking every day, going to class drunk, and one day he woke up and instead of drinking right away like usual he didn't, and felt hung over, and he just up and said, "Forget this," and quite college.

He always hit the alcohol, and always felt bad about himself because of his scars. "Children are the worst. You know, children can...children can be pretty mean." One thing that’s really helped him was a fire trauma support group, started by a woman in his town who had BBQ fuel canister burst on her. The other members are made up of a group retreat whose cabin caught fire. "Just to have other people who are out there, who know what I feel like, what I went through, that's good. I mean, I tell my wife things, but she doesn't know what it's like. No one does. I mean, she burned her hand with grease once, and had to go to the doctor, but...yeah, so this support group has helped me a lot, and I've felt a lot better about myself." Since then he's drunk a lot less.

The other thing that helped him out was that 3 years ago, he had a daughter. And she just means the world to him. "Now I don't let anybody smoke in the house, or cuss in the house, and if they're drinking alcohol they have to put it in another container. And the only alcohol we have in the house is a bottle of liquor in the way back of the fridge, and they're small now (he has a son of about one and a half now too) so they can't find it, and shoot, in the past year I've maybe only drunk about this much of it (about an inch)."

And then Brett dropped me off at the huge truck stop in Grand Island, Nebraska. I thanked him for all his help, he gave me his cell phone number, and trucked on home and I ate at Subway, checked out which movies were playing at the truck stop (it had two small movie theaters for "professional drivers only") and headed back out to the road once again, holding up my sign and waiting for the next big thing.

It was about 2pm then, on Saturday, August 30th.

???

2003-09-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

Just to let everyone know, I will be arriving home tonight. I don't just want to say where I am right now, but I will be back late tonight (thurs.). Woohoo! I'm cheating tho, I'm taking a flight home.

Grand Island, Nebraska

2003-09-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

Then Brett picked me up. Ah, Brett, we had many fun times. And maybe more to come. So far it's seemed like everytinme I've gotten really desperate for a ride,one sure enough comes along. Altho, sometimes I'm really despearate for a really long time before a ride comes, so do with that what you will.

Thank GOD I was out of the rain!

I climbed into Brett's truck and right away he offered me a peanut butter'n jelly sandwich. I don't really like those, but I didn't want to refuse so I gulped the thing down anyway, not having had any brefix.

Brett has MANY many stories to tell, and they're all pretty interesting. I wonder which order I shall tell them in. Ok, carnies, porn star, drug runner, immigrants/racists, dairy farm, burn victim.

This couple he picked up once at a truckstop were carnies, who just go fed up with the carnival they were travelling around with, quit it in the middle of nowhere, and were looking for another one. Brett saw the two needed help, thought they were a father and daughter, "That's how far their ages were apart," and asked if they wanted a ride.

"You're not going to fuck my girlfriend," said the man.

I laughed at this. "And I told him," said Brett, "Well it's not her is the one I'm lookin' at, I says, and I gives him a little wink. Boy, well that turned his ideas around." Brett said they were a really fun couple, they just saw life differently than he did. "It's a hard life, I'd hate to do all that travelling, especially for the pay, but they seemed to like it. Odd folks." While they were stopped once, the man disappeared and Brett asked where he went. The girl pointed him out, "And sure enough he was climbing an elevator, right there on the side of the road, and he was almost to the top!"

"A grain elevator?" I asked.

"Yeah, turns out the guy just likes to climb stuff, and that's what he does, he climbs the ferris wheel and things to fix em."

***
I'm really sorry folks, this Kinko's is horrendously expensive, I'll just have the post the rest somewhere else.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

2003-09-01T02:17:00.000-07:00

I found Douglas' truck Friday night and knocked but no one answered and I started to feel bad about waking him up in the middle of the night. I went back to the truckstop and tried falling asleep, but then another hitchhiker came in and we started talking. It was funny, because I looked at his bag, he looked at mine, and it was like we had an instant connection.

He was about the same age I was, from Montreal, and he spoke with what I'm guessing was a French-Canadian accent. He'd hitchhiked all the way to Southern Mexico and back, having been away for 2 months now. We exchanged stories, I asked him where else he's been hitchhiking, and what hitching in Mexico was like. He told me that hitchin in europe was fun, that it worked out OK. He likes to hitchhike, he says, because it's a cool way to travel. And cheap. He looked kind of attractive, actualy, wearing a black knit sweater and cargo pants, and I wondered how many women had fallen for that accent.

"Hitching in Mexico is good too, except for two things. One: this kind of place doesn't exist," he said, gesturing with his hands to indicate the truck stop. "The other reason is that the further south you go, the less and less cars. In the far south there are no private cars, they're only autobuses and taxi cabs. And you can hail them, but you have to pay." The same went for Guatemala. "But in Guatemala, there is no need to hitch. It's so cheap...like one U.S. dollar for an hour bus ride or something like that...there's no need."

On the way back he stopped in El Paso, Texas, which has 3 truck stops. He showed me his atlas, and I saw that on every map he had marked where all the truckstops were. "In El Paso, every time you show up at a truckstop, they call the police on you. So iI had to go to every single one, and the police had to come 3 times to tell me I should go. It was horrible!"

After we had talked a ways, my eyes began to droop, my face yawning, and I really wanted to go to sleep. I tried nodding off there watching TV but there was too much smoke in the room, it was too bright, and the chairs weren't too comfortable. I said goodby to French Canada and went looking for Douglas' truck again. I knocked louder this time, and Douglas answered in boxers, and let me sleep on his bunk altho I think he was none too pleased that I woke him up. I didn't care, I was too happy about a place to sleep. I moved his guitar and food box, and unrolled my sleeping bag.

On Saturday morning I woke freezing, but still sleepy enough to wait until Douglas woke up. When he did: "Are you awake?

"Yes," I said.

"Time to go."

"Ok." I thanked him again, gathered my things, and walked back to the truck stop, washed up a little, and go out to the road with my sign that said, "EAST." It was a cold grisly Wyoming morning, the rain was coming down and it was freezing compared to the heat of the other places I've been. RAIN RAIN RAIN, COLD RAIN, WINDY RAIN, that's all I could think of. I huddled under the stop sign wondering if it could shelter me some, but had to shy away from it when I realized it was only dripping more water on me.I put on all 3 shirts I had with me plus my sweater, but when the trucks kept passing me by, all I could thinkf of was how much it sucked and just wished I was anywhere but there.

Cheyenne, Wyoming (continued)

2003-09-01T02:00:00.000-07:00

"We were put on this earth for Love. We're here to Love, and that's the whole goal of everything," said Douglas, continuing from where I left off last time because the truckstop internet stations cost WAY too much for their SLOW slow connections, "We are here because our mother's and our father's Love--that's how people are born, from Love. We are born of the Love of God. And still people don't believe in God."

I asked him what he thought about other religions. "Religion will not get you into heaven. I don't care nothing about religion. What matters only is Love for God, for loving your neighbor, for following the ten commandments. Christian, Catholic, Mormon...other religions, it doesn't matter. Loving your neighbor, being kind, loving everybody, that's what matters."

Douglas mentioned that he was from El Salvador, so I said something about how he must have seen some pretty horrible things, enough to hint that I know more about the civil war there than most Americans probably do, but I didn't want to ask any more questions because I didn't want to upset him. He said yeah, he saw a lot of horrible things, and that the war had started when he was 15 years old.

The trip to Wyoming went pretty quick, and it's not like I'm even going to venture into downtown Cheyenne because nothing's likely to be happening there. But hey, it's a new State, I met a new person, and I also met another trucker, by the name of Minnie (sp?) who gave me a free shower here. It's raining, I'm kind of tired, and Douglas offered to let me sleep in his cab which I might do if I can find it again.

Another trucker, a Garth Brooks-looking guy by the name of Jim, came up and talked to me, told me I could stay in his cab and watch TV with him, but he had the same kind of desperation in his eyes that Jaime had, so despite the ring on his finger, I think I'll trust my instincts on this one and pass. Sorry, Jim. Thanks if you had no ill intentions.

Tomorrow...
...is another day.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

2003-08-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, yeah. So I stood at the trucksotp outside Denver and after standing around holding a sign for 2 hours I began to get afraid that I'd have t ostay there another night. Nothing against Denver, I just wanted to be moving on. Then a truck pulled up, I said I was going East, he said he was going North, and I said what the hell.

Douglas Hernandez is a really nice guy, and he has 2 boys and 3 girls. One boy he doesn't really know if it's his or not, a 17-yr old, but the boy calls him Dat and he ain't gonna argue, break the kid's heart. The other boy is 10, and douglas doesn't even know if he's still in Los Angeles anymore, or where he is. His girls (ages 4, 6, and 8) he tries to see every time he can--one called while i was riding next to him, just to say "I love you....and goodbye!" His ex-wife is making it hard for him to see them now that he has another wife. His 1st wife left him for another man, and now she's crawling back to him. "These women, he says, "They need to have more self-respect for themsleves. She left because she thought he was better than me. These poor men dating married women, the wives always want to go back to their husbands. She wants me back and she's still living with him!"

"I see these 16 yr old girls, they always want to go out with 25 yr olds. They want this "experience." They want to...well, you know. They want that experience. I see this 14-yr old girl, she's flirting with this 38 yr old. And her father, he's right there, he doesn't do anything, he says go for it. I say to her, why do you always hang around that older man so much of the time? She says, I like men with experience. And this is a girl in the church."

We talked a lot about religion, about God, about giving and not asking in return, about good attitudes affecting life, about seeing the glass half full, and keeping good karma. "We were put on this earth for Love. We're here to Love, and that's the whoel goal of everything."

Cheyenne, Wyoming

2003-08-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure if I spelled Cheyenne right, but I don't have time to check. Just a little update- I got a ride from Denver to Cheyenne. Not really the direction I was looking for but ...oh crap my time is running out. Better post.

Denver, Colorado

2003-08-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

Denver doesn't suck at all, which is quite surprising.

I met another hitchhiker while I was waiting for the bus. He was coming from NY, on his way to Santa Barbar. He was about 40 or so, had a lot of blond scragg on his face, long hair and bloodshot eyes. He told me he'd been up for a while, and was tired as hell. He was planning to wait until dark, and then go inside the truck stop into the tv room and try to shut his eyes there. "I was in this place last night that I was afraid to close my eyes or they'd throw me out, and my eyes are pretty hurtin today." We compared stories of nice truckdrivers, and it seemed like he had a lot more experience than me so I asked him a lot of questions. His answers seemed to confirm what I've already learned so far this trip.

He said he met a lady down the road with a sign. "You know, one of those signs?"

"Like a hitchhiking sign?" I ask.

"No. like one of those signs, it doesn't matter what it says, but they're asking for money? She said she makes about 100,000 a year."

"WHAT?" I ask.

"Yeah, she said she was a retired schoolteacher, and now she's a professional bum. She lives in Boulder, and that's a pretty ritzy area, and she drives out here and begs for money. I guess she does pretty good at it too. She bought me a cup of coffee and some food while I was waiting out here, and then I saw her drive away, I think it was a volkswagen or a cadillac or somethin."

"No shit, really?" I didn't believe him. That couldn't be possible.

"Yeah. You can make some pretty good money doing that. I didn't believe it myself, but I tried it for a day and pulled in $300. That's not bad."

"That's not bad at ALL."

We talked some more, but then we ran out of things, the bus still hadn't come, and so we just sat there kind of awkward. Then an old man came up, asked us about the bus, asked us where we were headed and where we were from, I mentioned L.A., and the old man said he used to live there for quite some time. "L.A. was pretty good to me. I would have liked to stay there. But the wife died, the son sold the house, and I can't afford to rent in L.A. So I moved out here with my daughter."

He'd just come back from the casino, because the hotel we were right by had a free shuttle that went there.

Then our bus came, the 44 into downtown, and we both got on it, said goodbye to the hitcher (I swear I'll remember his name soon) and were off. Everybody on the bus was really fuckin nice. Some middleaged overweight guy was practicing his spanish with a pregnant chicana girl with 2 small kids. One guy came on and found his bus buddy and started chatting right away to him. Oh, well, there was one girl that sounded pretty upset on the phone, and she was pretty cute, but the argument didn't sound cute at all. The bus driver gave me directions to a hostel, and when I got off I was at the 16th Street Mall, which runs most of the length of downtown.

16th Street Mall is kind of like 3rd St. Promenade for those of you from LA, and it was a great place to be walking down on a Thurday night. I wanted to find my hostel so I could get rid of my pack, so I stopped at a map, and right away some youngster like myself waddled up and told me, "Well, you're obviously not from here, so it's my job to ask you if you like to get high and if you'd like to come smoke a bole with me and my buddies."

I said no, but thank's for asking.

"Hey! It's the Colorado way!"

As I walked on this other guy says to me, "Welcome to Denver! You just get here?" I told him I did. "How long you staying?" Oh, probably just passing through. "Oh, you should stay. You should live here." What the Fuck is Up with this city? Is everybody this nice?

I hopped aboard a free shuttle that took me closer and found my hostel right away. $10.00 per night. I got my linens, made my bed, then went to McDonalds because I was hungry again and starting to get a headache. That's when that bum stole my cheeseburger, that rat bastard.

I keep popping my ears here because it's so high up. I would hope that living here that would eventually go away.

I asked the uh, hostel dude what there was to do tonight, and he told me of sports bars and rock and roll bars, but I figured that's where guys his age (30-40) went. He told me of a jazz place tho, and I thought Holy Shit, On The Road-Jack Keroac- Denver Jazz! So I went to Dulcinea's The 100th Monkeys. The guy let me in free to check it out for one drink, but if I wanted to stay I'd have to pay the $3 cover charge. I went in, the place was cool but absolutely nobody was there. I ordered a jack and sour (is that right? I keep wanting to call it a sourdough jack) and watched the band for awhile, and they sucked. They were trying, but to me real jazz isn't played off of music stands. You have to know it by heart to really feel it. So I left. I think the place was named so because there were a lot of monkeys, toy figurines and plush monkeys of all sorts, probably about 100. I didn't want to ask if there really were 100, tho, because it seemed a pretty dumb question to ask, and I bet they get it all the time.

Then I strolled back to the 16th street mall, rode the free shuttle to the other end, and started following some guys who were dressed like they would be going someplace I would like to go, so I followed them. Wound up in another bar area and one small place called...shit. Coluscopito pio's or something, I don't know. And jazz was just pulsing out of this place. Jazz was so hot coming out that they had to open the emergency door so that everybody didn't just melt, and there were people just gathered outside that door alone.

I got in, no cover, drank a beer and heard some really good jazz. I was leaning on a counter and then right beside me, this guy stops sipping his Smirnoff ice, calmly unpacks his little trumpet (cornet, i think?) and just bursts right into the song out of nowhere like a bunch of flowers through a sidewalk, and plays some really good horn, and I just watch his numbers fiddle through the notes like anxious spiders.

The main guy, a baritone sax player plays like a rock, seriously as if he's made of limestone, a statue in the park that gets shat upon. His head don't move, his legs don't move, he sits down on a stool to play the sax, and the only thing that moves are his fingers. And he plays great. When his turn is over, and somebody else is wailing on piano, or drums, or bass, he just sits there with his mouth open, puh, like he's still got the thing up to his lips.

I make eyes with the waitress, who looks like my roomate's ex Aja but weighs a little more, but she's only interested in nothing, nothing at all, not even the music. The band takes a break, and I move on, because there's plenty more to see tonight.

Next I go into some other bar, that sucks, and I come right out again. Then I got to a sports bar that's a lot more like LA, and I walk around a bit but I'm not wearing any flashy clothes, I don't know anybody, and there's really nothing to do exept oggle the girls and try to sneak peaks at their cleavage. Ok, I wasn't being very sneaky about it.

I walk on, look at a few other places, walk into some just to use their restrooms, and move on. I head for this one place I earlier heard playing a Flaming Lips tune (Fight Test), and they've got a band called Askimbo. If you buy a $3 beer, $2 goes to the band, so I did. The lead singer was mexicano, but all the other guys were white, and they were all really good. His voice reminded me a lot of Los Lobos, but they were playing more jazzier stuff. "Sitting at the Dock of the Bay" he sang and it was fucking great. Then he started to go off about how his father just got back from Iraq, and how we should support the troops, and that was ok. But then he went off on how we're gonna "Find those bastards and make them pay for trying to take away our freedom" and that was not okay. But then the bassist said "Fuck Bush! I hate Bush! Support our troops, but Fuck Bush!" Then the lead singer said something about "Hey, i don't care how you feel about Bush, but you gotta love bush, you know what I'm saying? You gotta love bush, you gotta eat bush." And that got them all pretty sidetracked about bush.

From there I walked back to the hostel, had a great rest, took a shower this morning, and walked here to the Denver Public Library, where the Inter-net is FREE! And now you're finally all caught up, thank god, even though it took me about 3 hours to type all this.

I'm planning to take the bus back to the truck stop, and then hitch from there to...hmm, maybe Kansas City?

Richfield, UT

2003-08-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

This was on Thursday, Aug 28th.

The truck started moving before I got up. I slept another hour, then peeked outside the window and the Utah landscape was too pretty to miss. I climbed down from the bunk and into the passenger seat.

"Good morning," said Tcoy.

I kind of grumbled good morning back, because in the mornings my voice doesn't sound its best.

The buttes of Utah were extraordinarily beautiful. They rise across the landscape like dominant cruise liners, all heading south. As we drove east on I-70 they bore down on us like the massive gods that they are. Giant boulders littered their feet, where large pieces of themselves had broken off, to remind us that even they are mortal.

Tcoy and I passed the time, altho we had much less to talk about because we'd talked everything out the day and night before. I kept trying to come up with questions to ask, or interesting things to tell him about myself, but all I could come up with was, "This is beautiful." Over and over again. Because it was.

In Colorado we pulled into the weigh-station, and Tcoy said it was the only one left where you had to drive over the scale and stop for each axle to be weighed separately. At all the other ones we'd been to we'd just have to drive over the scale and if the flashing yelllow light kept flashing we'd be on our way. There's even this thing called a FastPay, where you can just be weighed on the freeway itself, and a green light on the device you install in your truck means you don't even have to stop at all.

In Colorado we whisked around the mountain peaks and my face was just lit up the whole time I was so happy. I finally felt like I'd left, finally felt free. Everything felt better once I left California. Where California ends and America begins.

Tcoy explained to me all the different regulations California has that the rest of the country don't. For instance, trucks in Cali are limited to 55mph all of the time, whereas in every other state they get to go 70 just like everybody else. Fines are ten times as expensive (an outdated log book in the rest of the country: $100 fine. In California, $1000, even if it's only outdated by an hour). California doesn't even have any mile markers, that label how many miles it's been since the state border or since the highway began. Any and every other state does this, but not California.

"It's like its own country," I said.

"THANK YOU RICK. That's just what I've been trying to tell everybody."

We drove on I-70 through Grand Junction, Green River, and Vail. Vail had the most beautiful Colorado houses. If the mountains decide not to step on them. I thought, this must be around where that hotel from The Shining is. I got a little sleepy from the high altitude and low oxygen, and nodded off right there in my seat. Tcoy told me when I woke up that my head had been bobbing all around as he turned corners.

We stopped at a rest stop coming in through Glenwood Canyon, and I dipped my feet in the Colorado River. They have a bunch of signs there that detail how the freeway was built so as not to mar the landscape. It really is beautiful, even if the freeway is pretty loud.

The mountains in Colorado rise up straight from the road. Some of the roads go right through them, in tunnels blasted out long ago. Tcoy was going to take me up to Denver on Route 6, which has a lot of twists and turns and takes you all the way to the top ("You'll be holding on for dear life as I'm hanging around those sharp corners and you're looking out the window down the cliff for a mile, but trust me I know what I'm doing") but it was closed so we had to take the 2-mile long tunnel under the mountains instead. Can you imagine the ghost stories that get told when you're digging a 2-mile long tunnel and it's a mile either way back to daylight?

We also saw some trains full of coal, which I wish I could've taken a picture of for my dad, because my grandfather was a coalminer. I still don't know if I'll ever tell my parents about this trip anyway. I'm only thinking of their health.

When we got to a piece of road that was somewhat straight for a ways, Tcoy told me, "Ok, I'm going to hold the wheel like this, and then we're going to trade places, and I'll let go when I'm sitting there and you're sitting here. You ready?"

I wasn't, but hell, I wasn't going to give up this chance!

We traded seats and my eyes got about 10 feet across as I steered tons and tons of metal speeding across the interstate.

"There, it's not so bad is it?" asked Tcoy.

"Uhhhhh," I said, not really sure if I could steer and talk at the same time. I was scared shitless. We could wreck thousands of dollars of equipment and thousands of dollars of cargo, kill us, kill everybody on the road, jack-knife and cause a huge pileup. I pictured the helicopter footage on the news.

Slowly I began to adjust. Tcoy said I could turn the mirrors if I needed to, but they were fine. It took a while to figure out where I was in the lane, with only about a foot on either side. Then Tcoy made me downshift.

After a while, I kind of got the hang of it. Mostly I was just excited to be doing it, and my smile was plastered ear to ear as I drove the semi and Tcoy smoked a cigarette out the window. Fucking Great. I was driving an 18-wheeler.

Later on we switched back. That was before we got to Vail, I think. As we came down the mountain Tcoy told me about how some truckdrivers don't apply steady pressure to the breaks going down, and just put it on some when they need it, and that the break eventually stops burning and starts melting, and that's why they have truck turn-outs at the bottom of hills.

We pulled into West Denver (or well, the sign said Denver West, but what the fuck is that?) and had a meal together, and then said our goodbyes. He's going to contact me sometime in LA and I'm going to show him around Santa Monica, probably. He let me use one of his shower coupons at the truck stop and I walked across the street to catch a bus to downtown Denver.

Primm, Nevada

2003-08-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

I really wrote this on Weds, Aug 27th.

Yes! Yesyesyesyesyes. I found me a sweet ride, and he goes by the name of Terry McCoy, or Tcoy. I wond the best ride of my life, and also, at Bronco Bill's Casino, fifty cents.

Tcoy picked me up right at the Flying J truckstop in Barstow and has taken me all the way across the state line. He's given me a great ride, lots of conversation, a bunk, a raspberry tea, a key to the truck, the use of his cellphone, and a ticket all the way to Denver. Fuck Vegas, I could see it any other day of the week. I'm going to Denver.

Tcoy hails from Fairmont, Nebraska, about half an hour from Lincoln. Fairmont is a town of about 700, where everybody knows everybody and lives there all their life (just like Granger!) He's going through a diverce right now, and would rather not think about it, so he's glad for the company.

Tcoy gets paid $900 a week for 4 days of work. Well, 4 and a half. Most of his meals are paid for by his Flying J travel card, where he gets 1 cent for every gallon he purchases. His two fuel tanks take about 220 gallons each, and with each purchase over 50 gallons he gets a free shower. He takes Iams dog food from Nebraska to Fontana, Ca, exercise machines from Cali to Denver, and then drives the 5 hrs back to Nebraska. His run goes from Monday-Friday morning, and he gets the other days off. He's been driving trucks for about 22 years.

Tcoy's been through all lower 48 states, Mexico twice, and up through Canada on some runs. He told me all about the Largest Mall of the World in Edmonton, Canada, and tornadoes in Nebraska, and the mountain passes of Colorado. These mountain passes I can't wait to see. He's never been outside North America.

We stopped in Primm because it caters more to truckdrivers, and he can't exactly drive his 18-wheeler around the Vegas strip. Tcoy lost his $25 for the day, I lost something around $2 in the end, I had a pizza and we piled back into the cab to make a run for the rest of Nevada.

Losing only $25 was a big improvement for Tcoy. The first thing he said to me when I first got in when he picked me up was, "What do you want to go to Vegas for? You'll just lose all your money." He admitted to me much later that he used to have a big gambling problem. "Oh Rick, over the years, and I'm not exaggeratin, I musta pissed away about 200 grand." Once he starts, he just can't stop, and winning $800 or $900 was never enough, just like Jaime the crack addict.

"I'd get home over the week, put $600 on the company card, and shoot, I wouldn't get a paycheck that week, I owed the boss so much." Finally the boss finally took away the Visa check card and gave Tcoy another one that only lets him take out $25 a day, and that seems to do the trick. "I wish he did that a long time ago," said Tcoy. He also called his bookie so that he'd stop betting on football games. "I told him, listen, I'm tired of playing this game. I'm not very good at it. Please take me off your mailing list. It was one of the most proudest things I've ever done."

I asked him how he finally got himself to quit, and he said he was just tired of it, tired of feeling bad about himself, and tired of doing all that to his family. "We live in a nice house, but shoot, the money I've been making, we shoulda had a nice big house with a pool and some fancy cars...I just got tired of it."

We talked a lot about living in small towns and making your own fun. Tcoy told me about a game called "Polish horseshoes" played with a frisbee instead of horseshoes. You erect 2 white PVC pipes about 20 feet apart, put a beer bottle on top of that and try to knock it off from 20 feet away. If the other team (teams of 2) doesn't catch the frisbee you get 1 point, if the beer bottle hits the ground you get 2. They also like to throw empty beer bottles off an abandoned bridge and shoot at them while they're floating away. I told him about playing apple baseball, and smakcking these apples into smithereens, and the cherry fights we had at a neighbor's birthday party.

We rolled on past the big lights of Vegas, then on through Mesquite into Utah. We stayed up till 2 or 3 a.m., I'm not sure Mtn. time, Pacific time, or Central time; eyeing the dimly lit road and talking about our relationships with women.

Tcoy just got too restless. "I married young, neither of us had any experience before, and I just went through one of those...whattaya calllit? Women get menopaus, and men get..."

"A midlife crisis?" I venture.

"No...whattay callit when the men, they buy a fancy sports car and want to date women 25 years younger than themselves?"

"A midlife crisis," I answer.

"Yeah, well anyway, there's too much life to experience and she never wants to leave Nebraska. She's lived there all her life. And I tell ya, Rick, she's gonna die there.

Dammit! I'm sitting in a McDonald's right now and some guy just tried to sell me an ounce, then stole my cheeseburger. I really could use that cheeseburger, too. Rat bastard!

Anyway, that night we spent in Richfield, Utah. Tcoy folded down an extra bunk above his own and we slept in the cab for about 5 hrs. It was a good sleep.

Barstow, CA

2003-08-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

This was really on Wednesday, Aug 27th.

Got a ride from Hesperia to Victorville. Victorville sucked a big nut. Mick, 44, said he could take me there and at least it would be a little farther down the road, but it was fucking barren and twice as hot. He did suggest, tho, that I change my sign from "Vegas" to "Barstow," which I did. Didn't get me nowhere tho. I stood out in the heat for awhile, but finally I said fuckit. There was a motel nearby and I was hoping it had a pool.

I scoped it out but it was right by the manager's office and I figured I'd get caught. I stopped to rest in the shade outside a liquor store, and that's when David and Guny, a regular Cheech & Chong showed up.

They work together as gardeners. They just got off work and had to have a few beers. David told me, "Hey, you know my son Rogelio, right?"

I said no, but hen he asked me again and seemed so sure that I just said yes. I started talking to him, he asked where I was going, then he figured out I didn't know his son. It was too late--I was already in David's good graces.

"You smoke man? We got some good stuff if you wanna climb in the back. We'll get you wired man. Just to show you there's cool people in the high desert."

I said no, and he said I obviously didn't hang around his son. Gunny came back with the beer, and David said he could take me to Sidewinder outside Barstow, but that he was on empty. I said I could give him some gas money, he said okay, and so I waited in the shade while they smoked their crack.

"Why do you put so little in? Gunny, he always puts in like barely any rocks."

"That's cuz I gotta drive the truck! I can't hit it hard, cuz I don't want you, and I don't want me sent to jail. I'm keeping our asses out," said Gunny.

"Yeah, whatever. Gunny he hates Mexicans. I tell him to come over and smoke in my car but he won't take any orders from a Mexican."

"Wel fuck! You won't make up your mind! God you're worse than my fucking wife. This guy," he tells me, "He hates white dudes. And you're riding with him?"

"He ain't white," says David. I guess they're both right. "Your pipe fucking sucks dude."

"Fucking whining all the time. This is what it's like working with this guy. Complains all goddam day. Worse than my fucking wife."

"Will you get in the car already?" says David. "I don't wanna be passing it back and forth between cars. The longer you take, the more I'm gonna smoke, so take your time."

"Worse than my fucking wife. Will you tell this guy to shuttup for 5 goddam minutes? He can yack to you all the way to Barstow, but can you have him shuttup for 5 goddam minutes? He's fucking worse than my fucking wife."

I drink a beer from the cooler in Gunny's car (which smells like decades of spillage) and listen to them both bitch. They roll up all the windows to hotbox it. Then they have an intermission, then they smoke again. Then I get in the car, and David, on crack and having drunk some beer, drives me to Barstow.

"Gunny and me, we joke like that all the time. I call him a racist motherfucker and he calls me a stupid Mexican. I say, Gunny! Damn it, if it weren't for you and your kind, there wouldn't be no damn serial killers! All them serial killer dudes is white. Except for that Ramirez guy. He fucked it up for all of us.

"And Gunny, he tells me, Dammit Dave! If it weren't for you, there wouldn't be nobody starvin in America. Shiiiit, we have a good time."

I asked him if gardening was a hard job, and he said "Hell no. It's not bad. When we do it. Like today, we needed to go somewhere, to meet our connection, so we drove into the business so the manager could see us pull in, but we just kept on going on through to the back. We didn't do a damn thing."

David and I got gas, and then he drove me through the desert to Barstow. "You better not leave me to die somewhere in the desert, eatin cactus and making me hunt for my own food and shit," I told him.

"Shit, you think I'd do that? Naw man, I wouldn't leave you in the high desert. You don't think I'm cooler than that? Anyway, don't eat that cactus man. Me and my brother tried to do that one day, playin up in the hills, and we got sicker'n dogs. Just cuz we saw that shit on Bonanza."

We pulled into Barstow, shook hands, and I thanked him for the ride, and he left.

David, by the way, is voting for Schwartzenegger, because he things Gray Davis lied about all the rolling blackouts, and he'd never vote for a mexican or black man. "We gotta kow our place. Blacks, Mexicans, we weren't made for that shit."

He was on crack all right.

Hesperia, CA

2003-08-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Man the guy made my Blizzard with LOTS of toppings. Godpraise DQ Hesperia.

I slept in a park last night near one of the exits on the 10 east. It was nightfall, and even I wouldn't pick up anyone at night. So i kept walking to next exits until I hit a Bravo Burger, got their special, sat down and wrote some. They kicked me out at ten, and I walked some til I found a park-type grassy area, walked a ways from the road, unrolled my sleeping bag, and lay (lie?) down for the night.

I awoke to the largest noise ever and thought the apocolypse had fallen and the end of the world was galloping towards my head, then I realized it was a trucker honking his horn on the freeway.

I was getting a little cold so I zipped up this thing on my sleeping bag that makes it cuddle around your head like a hood. I was sleeping that way for a while when a dog came up out of the night sniffing me and nuzzling. I couldn't really see it because I was all cocooned up in my bag. I lay (lie?) still hoping it would eventually loese interest and move on, but it didn't, so I unzipped my bag to get it to shoo.

It was the largest black dog I've seen in a while, a big drooling rottweiler-type dog with a chain around its neck and 3 or 4 other leaner black dogs behind it. I tried to get them all to go away by motioning my hands, but the big one kept nuzzling up against my hands to be petted, then it started licking them. I kept stepping back from it, but it kept pushing up closer and doing the same thing. Then it started to squeeze my fingers with its teeth, and then it started to bite.

I was still backing up but it was a giant swarm of black dogs and they kept pushing me back. "Now go on, git," I yelled, but they just swarmed closer. Then the big one grabbed hold of my hand and owuldn't let go. I was really scared at this point. I couldn't get my head out, and the dog was really gnawing hard on my hand, and it hurt like hell but I couldn't force out a scream.

And the dog's eyes bulged at me, giant white with volcano red streaks going through them, as if the dog had been on drugs, and then its teeth changed and its face changed and it became a drug addict, a black devil drug addict and he looked at me and clenched my mangled hand in his jaw and he cried out to the moon, flicking his tongue out around my hand. And the black dog-man looked at me and laughed and wrenched my hand around even more, biting into it harder. And then it let go, and changed back into a dog, and the dog laughed horribly, with blood and spit, the other dogs grinned their teeth and then walked away.

I woke up with a start, fumbled for my glasses, and looked around frantically for any shadow dogs. It was the worst nightmare I had for a long long time. I checked to see if my sleeping bag had been zipped up too, but I guess that was part of the nightmare as well. I don't have too many dreams that match so seamlessly with reality, and I began to wonder if some sort of demon had really visited me in my sleep. I was fucking scared. I couldn't really get to sleep after that until it was light.

Sorry to give you one of those "and then I woke up!" endings, but that's how it happened to me, so I thought I'd relate it that way to you.

When the sun came up I slept about another hour. The ground was really hard, and I forgot that the sleeping bag wasn't really long enough for me- yes, even for me- it's a kid's sleeping bag. I was up on the road again by 8:30, and walking to the next exit. All these exits in Pomona suck, and nobody's ever stopping. I was walking to a gas station when a man called out if I was hitchhiking.

I told him I was, and he asked which way, I said east, and he said that's where he was going. My first clue was the purple carpet he had on the dashboard, and I was right to be skeptical about the first ride I hadn't asked for.

Jaime was his name, and I was scared most of the ride that he was going to try to rape me, but I'm here in Hesperia now so it looks like he was ok.

Well, ok enough to get me to Hesperia. Jaime is Basque, from Spain, came here when he was 21, moved to the middle of a desert, said it was quite a shock to have no clubs to go to, no nightlife like he had in Spain. "This is not America!" he said with a slight Spanish lisp, "This sucks!" He must have changed his mind, however, because later he said to me, "You can call me a desert lover." Could I call him a cop?

I suppose I should tell you what he looks like. Some missing teeth, and the others have adjusted for it by pointing themselves in new directions to fill the gaps. Unkempt shaggy scruff, blond, some stray hairs coming from strange places on his face, a sore on his wrist. Tank top, jeans.

Jaime has been in the joint 3 times, each time for drugs (possession, possession to sell, etc.) and used to hustle in Hollywood for sex, male prostitution, anything to get what he needed. And what he needed was crack. I found this out when he asked me where I was from.

"L.A."

"Oh, Los Angeles? Where from? Hollywood?"

"Um, yeah, around there."

"Like around where? What cross streets?"

He was trying to find out what side of Hollywood I was on, but I didn't get that til later. We stopped for gas and he bought me some orange juice that I was reluctant to accept, offered to buy me food but I lied and said I'd already ate. I wondered if I should get back in his car or not. Ah, what the hell.

He kept trying to take me up to show me the mountains, but I kept telling him no. I was really scared he'd take me there anyway but he didn't. I told him I was headed east, maybe to Vegas, and he told me he could take me to Hesperia because he had nothing better to do, and it would be a good place to get another ride.

Jaime lives with his brother and has been clean now for 3 yeards after many years of smoking crack. He got tired of going to jail, and coming out each time with nothing and having to start all over again. (Oddly, this is exactly what my uncle said aobut being divorced 3 times.) So he got clean, altho he said not because he didn't like the drugs, he loves to get high, but because he didn't want to go to jail again. So hey, prison time is a deterrent afterall.

"One time is too many, and a thousand is never enough. That's what they taught us in the program, and it's true, when you do drugs you can never have enough. You do drugs? No? Good man, stay off it."

Jaime doesn't go down on guys, but he's greedy he says. "I don't give head, but I like a guy to go down on me. " He kept asking me if I'd ever experimented, I said no, and he kept trying to convince me to all the way to Hesperia. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna try anything. But maybe, this is how my mind works, I'm thinking maybe I can change your mind before you get there, eh?"

He didn't.

I guess he picks up hitchhikers just hoping. "I pick you up because I like the company. But last week I picked up a Texan, and I almost got some. Almost. He said, I don't give head, I don't let people fuck me, and I don't kiss ass. I said, well what do you do then?" Jaime laughed. "If you're hustling, you have to suck cock. You have to." He told me he still goes to Hollywood some times to get men. "Only $20 for a blowjob, so it's not much, but it helps them, you know, cuz they need it."

Thank God I'm here alive in Hesperia! So I got a Blizzard here at the DQ just because there is one.

Pomona, CA

2003-08-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

So anyway, the truckdriver comes out, I ask him for a ride, he says he lives right around the corner, otherwise he'd take me. Damn.

So I ask Doug what he does. "Well..." he says, "I'm not a cop."

I wait for him to continue but that's apparently his finished statement.

"So what do you do?" I ask.

"I'm not a cop..." he says. "You know, I don't have a badge, I don't have a gun or anything. Basically, I'm not a cop." He says this as if he's explaining to me the secrets of life.

This guy has got to be going somewhere.

"Basically, you have t ochoose between the good side and the bad side, and that's me, I'm one of the good guys. But to be good, sometimes you have to join the bad guys, you know what I mean?"

I have no clue. "You mean like go undercover?"

"Well, to go undercover means you're interacting with things indirectly. I don't do that. Basically, you could say I don't work for the government."

Pause.

"And I exterminate."

Pause.

"But not people." Oh thank god! "And I have some girls. I drive them places, I let them do their thing, I make sure nobody hurts them and they get home safe. I'm not a pimp. How far they wanna go, that's up to them, I just make sure they're ok."

"So do you have people who know you're doing this?" he asks me. I told him I did. "That's good man. You gotta be careful. You could end up DEAD." As he says the word "dead" he looks at me over his sunglasses and I see his huge bulgy eyes.

Me: "Ok, well uh, nice meeting you Doug, I think I saw a bus over there that I want to catch. Take care!"

And thank god I got away.

Pomona

2003-08-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

Damn You Pomona!

So I walked back across the overpass and a van broke down on the freeway. I went down, met Michael y Arturo, who's van busted a tire. I walked with Michael to get a hammer, which a guy gave willingly w/o even waiting to get it back. Then we went to get the spare tire down from the van. It laid under the belly of the van, and try as I would to pound with the hammer, the screw thing would turn but not let the tire go.

So then Michael notices a pipe going from the rear bumper to the tire, and I try with the elongated tire iron and it fits, and when I start to turn it, voila! The tire starts coming down. So then I basically change his tire for him, cuz he says they can get me 20 miles down the road. Problem- the spare is pretty busted too. But I replace it anyway, we get in, and then they pull over and ask some people for advice. He comes back and tells me that they're probably going to either stay there and try to fix it or go back to LA. Fuck. So now I'm right back where I started.

I remember seeing a bus getting on the 10 east ramp. So I go try to find where those wonderful things come from. I wait a long time--it's dark now. I see a semi pull into the diesel pumps of the Arco so I go try to meet the driver. This is when I meet Doug, a strange motherfuckerin cat, who gives me the eye when I walk up to the station.

Doug says I must be tired with that big pack on. Doug asks if I'm on drugs, I say no, then he tells me that if I am, I should go into rehab, life is much better without them, trust him, he says. Doug has on sunglasses and the sun has already gone down. Plus they're those pansy in-style-I'm-a-backstreet-boy glasses and that is NOT who Doug is.

I will post more on this later, because my computer is running out of time.

Pomona

2003-08-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

Woo! A dip in the pool feels GOOOD! Here I am now in Pomona. God I thought I'd never get outta Rosemead. I stood by the onramp or a LONG ass time, then went and stood by the other ramp, then asked people at the gas station. finally when one car passed by and laughed aat me cuz they'd seen me at the same spot a copule of hours ago I decided it was time to move on.

So I walked to the next exit, grabbed and sucked an unripe lime on the way, and finally came to an exit that was much more accessible. Stood there or about 10 mins before a Mexicano in a red Toyota pickup truck stopped. Threw my bag in the back and hopped on in.

Cristoban had a short fade and some overgrown pimples that dripped sweat because his truck didn't have AC. We got to talking, and had an O.K. conversation with my limited spanish and his limited english.

Cristoban is from Guadalajara and lives in Pomona and works in pool construction in Rosemead. At least, that's where he works now. His job sites change rom Orange to Santa Barbara to everywhere and anywhere. I asked him (I think) i he still had to drive home everyday from when he was working in santa barbara, and he said yes (I think). "Mucho traffico," he says. "Todos las dias?" I ask. "Si. Todos las dias."

We drove a while in the traffic and he let me off at a Pomona chevron at about 5pm. I thumbed there awhile but nothing was happening, except a sheriff's helicopter landed right next to the gas station at the Ganesha High School, and all sorts of emergency vehicles were there and I think I even saw a KTLA chopper.

So I tried walking to the next exit, and it was far and this one is no better. So I walked over a bridge and am now at the Lemon Tree Motel, where I hopped a wall and swam in their pool. I'm sitting here lounging in my underwear now as I'm writing this, and I've even got my sunglasses on and i'm eating an orange I picked earlier. Ahh, it's great. I just have to figure out what I'm going to do next.

Oh, one more thing. I saw an old man lying in his own yard on his back, clutching a cane. He had an oxygen mask strapped to his face, with plastic tubing running inside the house. Poetic, no?

Rosemead

2003-08-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

Got a hitch from Michael to about 5 miles down the road, to Rosemead. Michael's studying CIS (Computer Information Systems) at college and hopes to get out soon. Michael is asian, drives a 85-95 Honda accord, and speaks in a heavy accent. Heavy to the point that "Michael" sounded like "Mico." I would guess japanese, but I'm really not one to guess. Unless his name really was Mico. Hmm.

Trying to hitch a ride out of Rosemead, but no luck, so I took a nap by the on ramp under a tree. These ants crawling all over my body are starting to bite, though, so I'm gonna pack up and try again.

This is on Tues, aug 26th, as was the post before. I'm at a truckstop internet station trying to update everything.

East LA

2003-08-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

I just got two rides and now i'm in East LA. I headed out my door, kept walking and tried to hitch on Wilshire but it wasn't happening. But around San Vicente I caught a ride to the 10, and his name was Andy.

Andy maybe looked about 50 and drove an old SUV-type vehicle that looked like it'd been made beore SUV was such a popular acronym. Andy picked me up and when he asked right away where I was headed, even after I said the 10, I knew he was a good one. I said East, and he said he was headed West, but he dropped me off at a gas station right by the freeway. Not very far to drive, but a helluva walk.

Andy looked a little rugged but friendly, started right away telling me he used to hitch a lot when he was younger, in the US but mostly europe. Said europe was totally different than here, that girls would pick him up and want to mess around, which would never happen here. I agreed. He gave me some good advice--always wait in places where it's convenient for cars to stop, and always smile. He said he got picked up a lot more than other hitchers, cuz no one wants to pick up a sourpus. I'm not sure if he actually said the word sourpus, but he looked like the kind of guy who might.

At the 10 east on ramp, about a hundred cars passed me by in rapid succession, but luckily there was traffic, the meter was on, and all the cars had to slow down enough that it would be easy for them to pick me up i they wanted to. I got a lot of blank stares and avoided glances, but finally a man motioned me towards his late 80's model Honda Accord/subaru-type passenger car. His name was Ellis. He looked kind of uninteresting, and spoke in a voice some would consider meek.

Ellis hails from NY, hopefully not named after the island, and is an adult educator who teaches those working at the Boieing plant about their rights and the history of the worker's movement. They keep getting screwed there, he says, because Boeing keeps laying off workers even tho there isn't any need to. That Boeing plant, I think the one in long beach cuz that's where he was headed, is mostly run on gov't military contracts, which are pretty steady, and unlike consumer contracts, don't rise and fall with supply and demand. So basically they just hire and fire people willy-nilly so as to squeeze the most work out of them, and i they're not doing that they're shipping the work off to other countries.

So that was my little worker's history lesson from Ellis. He congratulated me on my adventurism (when i told him i need to get away, he said TELL ME ABOUT IT), and I congratulated hhim on the fine work that he's doing. I told him about the online journal, and he said "That's very fashionable these days, isn't it?"

Anyway, Thank you Andy & Ellis, Rides #1 and 2. You have very kind hearts and I hope you're as happy on your journeys as I am on mine.

Ellis dropped me off at where the 10 meets the 710, and I wrote this sitting on a tuft of grass outside a Chevron station in the shade. Some guy at a phonebooth called to me, "Is that a nice park or what?"

Going to try to keep moving east on the 10.

Los Angeles

2003-08-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Woke up at 9 this morning, ate, took what was probably my last shower for awhile, and really enjoyed it. Packed everything up, said goodbye, and left.

And then came back, I'd forgotten some things. Ate a hamburger, said goodbye, and left.

And then came back again. I suppose I should tell you people that I'm actually leaving, that I'm stepping out the door and actually going on this trip. Which is why I came back the 2nd time to update this thing. But third time's the charm, right?

I'm tempted to go into long detailed daydreams of what could possibly happen to me on this trip, but I think it'd be much more exciting just to start the adventure now, don't you?

Thanks to those of you who've wished me luck. Let's see what we can do with it.

Los Angeles

2003-08-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's 4 in the AM, and I just finished packing. I guess I'm leaving early. We'll see if I can wake up or not.
Onwards and upwards, yah?

Los Angeles

2003-08-26T01:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, and I'm just taking a swiss army knife, not the entire swiss army.

Los Angeles

2003-08-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here at 1am the night before I leave and I really wonder if I'll be able to sleep tonight.
I guess we'll see.

Everyone has been really encouraging, and I'd like to thank you all for that. I've also added some things to take:

*Towel (yeah, i read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and i wouldn't feel a real frood without it)
*camera with flash
*swiss army
*large backpacking backpack
*one pair jeans
*one pair shorts
*2-3 pairs of underwear
*2-3 pairs of socks
* 2 tshirts
* one sweater

I wasn't planning on taking a camera, because I thought that if i was taking pictures of things, I wouldn't write enough about the way things looked, but then I remembered that all of you would have to wait to see the pictures anyhow, so I'll still have to write everything up so detailed that you can see it in that sweet ol' little head of yours. And some of you might not believe me if there weren't pictures, so I might as well. Jen has greatfully offered me the use of her Lomo camera, which can make some cool-looking prints, so thanks, Jen. Also thank all of you for writing in and saying "TAKE A F-ING CAMERA YOU IDIOT." I've seen the light.

I still have to totally pack everything, and make sure it fits and isn't too heavy, but all my other affairs seem to be in order. I'm planning to leave early in the morning tomorrow, Tuesday, around 8 or 9, because I want to start before it gets too hot. People keep asking me when I'm coming back, and where I'm going to, but if you could be picky about where you hitchhiked and what time you got there, it'd be called The Bus.

I'm thinking I'll try to head to a truckstop or gas station, and ask around. I don't really have any plans of where to go first, or how to get there. Maybe Vegas? All I know is East. Wagons East. Ha (Who's idea was the corn??? inside joke to all who've seen Wagons East.)

I picture myself standing on the front stoop tomorrow, bag on my back, looking out at my front yard and saying Holy Fuck. What the hell am I going to do? Here I go.

I'll probably do one or two more posts before I actually leave. Either way tho, i hope quite soon there are no more posts headed "los angeles."

Los Angeles

2003-08-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to sound cool/adventurous in these posts, but maybe it just comes off as pretentious? In case you didn't know, I do in fact suck, so the last thing these entries should sound like is pretentious.

Anyway, practicality. Here is my list of stuff I think I will take. Tell me what to add, what to subtract, and give me some general advice.

*Water bottle
*Water (can be packed inside water bottle)
*Contacts
*soap/deodorant/contacts/glasses/toothbrush/toothpaste
*sleeping bag
*lotion (yeah i have eczema)
*notebook & lots of pens
*US roadmap
*phonenumbers/addresses of everyone I've ever known

Ok it's getting pretty late. I'm sure I'll add more later. I've already decided I'm not taking any books/music/gameboys. I want to be writing on the road, and those would all just be distractions. I want to be absorbed in boredom, if needs be.

Freakinweirdo has suggested I take a cell phone, but arrgh, there be no cell phones readily available herrre. It would be nice (and safe), but I don't have one. So there.

What else should I take. Or not?

Los Angeles

2003-08-25T04:05:00.000-07:00

Well boys, now it's on. There was only one hitch, and that was if the project I was working on needed me to continue...and it turns out they don't, at least not for two weeks, so I'm off across the country in a hitchhiking frenzy.

This is the plot. I've been pent up in LA for quite awhile, recently graduated, and I need to get the HELL out. While everyone else was getting their graduation trips to europe and whatnot, I've been sticking it out here in the heat looking for jobs. Now don't get me wrong, I love LA, and I've had my trip to europe so I shouldn't complain...but a lot has happened here, or rather, a lot hasn't happened, and I'm getting restless. No job in sight, I quit the lame part-time job I had...what to do, what to do...suck my thumb...watch fuzzy tv...

And so it hit. I promised myself an adventure after graduation, and looks as tho I'm finally going to get it. My plan is to stop sucking my thumbs and use them for a better purpose--to hitch to the East Coast or bust. More likely bust, but I've heard encouraging stories from friends that perhaps hitchhiking in America isn't as dangerous and suicidal as our grandmothers and Fox News would like us to believe. So. Today is late Sunday night. Monday I make all my arrangements, and Tues I plan to walk out of here with a bag and some hopes. Tuesday is the DAY.

At least if everything goes to plan, and since I try to keep my plans as loose as that old pair of underwear your hefty uncle Sid borrowed, Tuesday may in some circumstances not be the day, in which case tues night or lovely Wednesday will step in like a designated hitter.

The plan also details that I stop in various cities, towns, and municipalities and post updates from public library computers. Clinton spread the web to all these small little towns right? If the Inter-net made it to the tiny town I'm from (2000 people, 4 chickens, 2 cats), I'm sure the Inter-net has infested the rest of the damn country.

More to come.

Los Angeles

2003-08-15T03:41:00.000-07:00

This is it.

This is IT.

On my way to new and better things, getting out of town, getting out of my head, leaving my home and valuables and searching for something invaluable---peace of mind. I feel like Ishmael going to sea, or Sal Paradise packing a canvas bag and setting out from his aunt's with nothing with fifty dollars in his pocket. My head is bursting with ideas and supernovas now where before there was only data filing and laziness. To clear up my head, I need to clear out.

More of this later.

Upwards and onwards, my friends. Upwards and onwards.