Beaker Chronicles

Omens en route to Hawaii

2008-08-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

July 31, 2008

Consummate travelers probably already know things that I have to keep teaching myself, like how to recognize bad ideas and bad omens.

The fundamentals of a good trip evidently do not include going out to the Astoria Beer Garden the night before a 7:50 a.m. flight and then sitting drunkenly in a Greek restaurant eating spicy feta dip while an overweight woman analyzes why her overweight boyfriend wants to move to a certain neighborhood in Queens (answer: Your cousin lives next door!).

I guess I have learned this now, though the trip didn’t seem real to me on Wednesday night, despite how much preparation it took, the frantic writing of four stories in one day for the paper. It didn’t strike me how bad an idea that little beer garden jaunt was until we were back at the apartment at midnight and Valerie was exasperated at how much time we had wasted.

Neither of us had packed. Neither had we cleaned the apartment like we had planned in order to deter the rodent invasion. It seems every time we get ready to take a trip, a mouse shows up. It was no different this time. On Tuesday, after four months without a trace of mice, I heard the little bastard rummaging around for the carbonized rice grains that fall under the burners of the stove. I threw the stove lid open and saw the mouse skitter toward the back. But then it paused at the gas hose which evidently is its bridge to this magical kingdom of charred food scraps. I called to Valerie to grab me the bottle of 409, hoping to give the critter a squirt of caustic kitchen cleaner. She didn’t hear, and after 10 more seconds, the mouse leaped off into the netherworld.

On Wednesday night, knowing we had frittered (and fetaed) away an evening better spent sweeping the crumbs from our cluttered floors, Valerie put her hands on either side of her head.

“That was a really bad idea going to the beer garden,” she said. “There’s just so much left to do!”

She promptly crawled into bed for a three-hour nap. I cleaned the apartment and tried to put together a list of what I would pack. Up at 3, out the door at 5, no sleep. That was the plan. While I was sweeping and doing dishes, Val’s phone rang twice. It’s not unusual to have callers this late, since friends and family are on the West Coast, so I didn’t think much of it until after I had crawled into bed, expecting to sleep for an hour before a panicked packing session.

After I tossed and turned for half an hour, she got up to stop the phone from beeping about its unheard voicemails. She didn’t come back for several minutes, so I walked into the living room. She was sitting doubled over on the floor, phone to her ear, scribbling frantically on our trip itinerary.

“Our flight’s been cancelled,” she said. “They rescheduled us for 2:45 p.m.”

And so the fallout from American Airlines’ colossal baggage fuckup came home to roost for us. In actuality, it was kind of a relief. Valerie was happy to be able to sleep a few more hours, and so was I. The pressure was off, and though we’d wind up in Hawaii at 10 p.m. instead of 1 in the afternoon, it still seemed as fortuitous as a massive equipment failure could be. Oh how wrong I was.

A little information about the baggage problem: American Airlines had just debuted its brand-new baggage checking system at JFK. They were so proud of it that they put out press releases. My newspaper wrote about how they claimed it would drastically cut loading times and save passengers all kinds of hassle.

Then they put it to use and it broke. A software problem caused the entire baggage system to go down. No suitcases could move anywhere. They piled in lobbies like the personal effects of dead refugees. American started delaying, and then canceling its flights to buy time. They had no baggage system for nearly 24 hours.

That all happened on Wednesday, the day before our flight. When I checked the New York Post Thursday morning, all reports were that the baggage system would be up and running at 6 a.m.

We hopped in the car and got to the terminal just after 1 p.m., giving us the allotted 90 minutes before departure time to deal with any unexpected problems. We walked to the electronic check-in terminal and plugged in our information. The machine promptly told us there was an error. In lieu of the boarding passes it was dispensing to everyone else, it printed out a little receipt that said, “You may check in no earlier than 24 hours before departure time.”

“Bullshit,” I said, loudly enough for an American Airlines employee to overhear. He walked over, asked us what the problem was, walked us through the touchscreen checkout again, and then nodded.

“Your flight’s not until tomorrow,” he said. Val and I looked at the itinerary in disbelief. She had written the information from the voicemail correctly: August 1^st. But at 2:30 in the morning, what constitutes “yesterday,” “today” and “tomorrow” get pretty blurred.

The terrible realization dawned on us that we had stressed, woken up early, put the car in super-expensive long-term parking a full day earlier than the airline wanted us. It also dawned on us that American Airlines was hoping we would politely swallow the fact that they had bumped us a full 30 hours from our carefully planned flight time. When you’ve got five days of vacation time, every hour counts, let alone every day, and we had a pre-paid hotel room waiting for us in Waikiki.

I was livid. I don’t deal well with transit inconveniences when they’re as minor as poorly publicized weekend subway service changes. When it means spending an entire day sitting sourly in my apartment instead of strolling on the beach 6,000 miles away, it’s a whole other ball game.

We got in line at the check-in desks behind about 75 other people and I mulled my building rage. I also called the airline a few foul names, which was enough to attract the attention of a TV news crew who were looking for just such a hapless traveler.

“Have you been affected by the baggage delays?” the well-coiffed black-haired woman with the microphone asked me. Yes, I told her. We were going to lose a day of our vacation.

“Well could we interview you about it? We’re trying to cover this story,” she said. “We want to help you by showing what’s going on.”

Ah, pandering to one’s sources. How charming. I explained that we were reporters ourselves and that she should find someone else, but she pleaded a little and I relented.

“Are you angry that their baggage problem is affecting your vacation?” Yes, I said. We had a very short vacation planned, and it’s unacceptable to lose an entire day.

“Have they offered you anything?” she said almost breathlessly. Here it is, the big scoop, the aha moment. “Any vouchers or compensation for your inconvenience?”

She wanted me to erupt with more of the shouting she heard before the cameras started rolling.

“Well, we’re waiting in line right now to talk to them, so I have no idea what they will offer,” I told her evenly.

“First American Airlines is the first airline to start charging passengers a fee to check their bags, and now this. As a traveler, what’s your reaction to that?”

She was really trying to bait me.

“Economic times are tough,” I said. “I’m not going to get mad at the airline for charging the fee. I’m just going to carry my bag on the plane instead.”

That was that. The TV crew wandered off, and we waited for another 15 minutes to get to a clerk. To American’s credit, the clerk was very helpful. She first told us that she could bump us up to 6:50 a.m. tomorrow, but that all Hawaii flights were booked solid today. I asked her to see if she could transfer us to another airline serving Hawaii, and without a word of protest, she did. It took her about 10 minutes of searching databases and she warned us we would have to hurry to catch the flight, but she put us on a plane to San Francisco at 2:55 p.m. where we transferred to a United flight to Hawaii.

Relief. Exultation. Tears of gratitude, almost, except for the realization that American thought it would be more acceptable to cost us an entire day of our vacation than to first try and get us on any other flight to our destination on the same day. I do not appreciate that.

We thanked the clerk profusely and rushed off to the terminal, but the circumstances stuck in my craw. I still don’t know if I’ll ever fly American again.

Everything went smoothly after that except for the TSA people. They pulled us aside at both JFK and San Francisco to search us and our bags. It’s a minor indignity, I realize, but that rationale kind of embraces the “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about” mentality. It also screws with my brain. I’m Mr. Unassuming White Guy. If you put a little pomade in my hair, you probably couldn’t tell me apart from the wholesome, gee-golly spawn of some insurance-selling Levittown dweller from the 1950s. I realize the TSA is trying to avoid racial profiling, but twice in a row?

Maybe this is an omen, too. If they do it again on the way back home, I think I’m going to go get a different haircut or something.

Day one in Key West: Stranded

2007-08-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

When we awoke Monday morning, the first thing I did was call the airlines to check on our bags. The automated system told me they had made no progress on our bags. We walked out of our bungalow into thick heat—high 80s at 9 a.m.—to breakfast with the rest of the hotel guests. We sat on the large deck of the main house and dined on small Danishes and bagels with a number of middle-aged guests talking about a tiny Air Force settlement in Arizona. When we mentioned our luggage predicament, and the hostess said that late bags usually arrived the same evening as their owners, implying something more permanent had befallen ours.

Unwilling to surrender all the near-tropical activities we had planned for, we made reservations for various boat trips and set out for Duval Street to replace our clothes and swim gear. Unkempt and wearing the same (full-length) clothes as yesterday, we ventured out into the stifling daylight.

There's little I can say that properly conveys the feeling of being under the Key West sun. It's like being in the most desolate place on earth and being the only thing God is paying attention to--simultaneously. You step into the light and begin to sweat before you can spell the word in your head.

Duval Street is the primary attraction on Key West itself—a 2-mile stretch lined with b a rs and touristy shops that teem with boneheaded T-shirts and thong panties with slogans like “LICK ME.” It’s optimistic to think that any woman who would wear that underwear would look like anything else but a trussed ham in them. But a few of the shops had clothes we were willing to be seen in, and soon we had spent more than $100 each on swimsuits, shorts, sandals and sunscreen.

Then, as I lurched around American Apparel in my sweat-soaked corduroys and Stones T-shirt, thinking this was something I could be doing in Brooklyn, my phone rang. The airline had just delivered our bags to the hotel. I thought back to the stores we had visited. Each one had a “no refunds” policy.

Val has a theory that the merchants of Key West have a pact with American Eagle to “misplace” travelers’ luggage in order to stimulate business on the island. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether a contractor like American Eagle would jeopardize its contractual relationship with a global carrier like American Airlines with such dirty pool. But it’s an agreeably romantic notion that harkens back to the scrappy entrepreneurship that made Key West the wealthiest city (per capita) in the nation during the 19^th century.

Key West was founded by wreckers—that is, men who salvaged the cargo from ships run aground on the reefs surrounding the dangerous Florida Straits. The wreckers’ first priority was to rescue the poor souls aboard the ships, but after that, the cargo was fair game. At least one of the three wrecker museums in town proudly proclaim that 125 years ago, nearly every household on the island had its own handmade set of silver—never mind the fact that the monogram on the forks and knives didn’t match the families’ initials. The town was built by people who made their fortunes on the misfortune of others. Now that steam power and more reliable navigation has made wrecking obsolete, it’s refreshing to think the natives have come up with a metaphorical wrecking trade to keep the spirit of their ancestors alive.

Musing on this fact, we wandered back to the hotel, where we promptly collapsed in a heap in the air conditioning. Final first-day tally: eight clothing stores, zero museums.

Key West vacation, day 1

2007-07-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 22
3:08 p.m.

We’ve made it as far as Miami International Airport, where we will spend an hour and a half waiting for a connecting flight to Key West. It’s been an oddly long day already—the first time in ages I can remember getting up before 11 on a Sunday. Brooklyn is a wasteland at 8 a.m. on the day of rest. We had free rein over Atlantic Avenue all the way out to JFK. The airport was practically deserted, too.

The plane wasn’t, though. It was an American Airlines Airbus A300, which, judging from the rickety CRT television screens mounted in the center ceiling console, could have been among the first to roll out of the Airbus factory 30 years ago. It was packed to the gills.

A300s are larger than most of the planes I’ve flown in lately. Boeing 737s and A320s are single-aisle planes, and because of this, the cramped space is a little more forgivable. This A300 had three rows of seats and two aisles. I had an aisle seat. People kept brushing their asses against the side of my head. If anything, it felt MORE claustrophobic than those smaller planes.

And, after feeling strangely relaxed all morning, leisurely eating the mediocre greasy airport food and breezing through the security checkpoint in all of 2 minutes, finally that familiar feeling returned: I wanted to beat to death half the people within earshot. A girl and her mother occupied the seats across the aisle to my left. She looked to be 14 or 15, and her tight jeans, striped socks and carefully loosened designer sneakers hinted at a healthy mall addiction. But she acted as if she were 6 or 7, draping herself sullenly across her mother’s lap and dangling her legs over the armrest into the aisle, kicking incessantly at my armrest. I wanted to smother her with an airsick bag.

The flight attendant was strangely surly, too. He looked like Vincent D’Onofrio with a tan and a 5 o’clock shadow. As the plane was climbing into the sky, one of the overhead bins popped open two seats away from him. Another passenger and I waved his attention and pointed to the bin. He shrugged the way a tow truck driver might shrug while impounding your car.

And what was our televised entertainment for this two-and-a-half-hour flight? CBS’s morning show plus an episode of “How I Met Your Mother.” Headphones for this scintillating bit of programming were $2 each.

I shouldn’t complain too much, though. The flight left on time and we arrived in Miami early. Of course, then we were stuck on the taxiway because a thunderstorm was approaching and all workers were being called indoors until the lightning threat passed. But even that took less than 10 minutes.

Miami International looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher. It has at least five concourses, all of which are connected by a series of meandering, narrow, windowless corridors that arbitrarily send up and down escalators every 45 seconds. Around each corner are helpful signs that tell you how many more minutes it will take to reach each concourse from where you are now (15 to 20 minutes for us, I estimate). Big posters all over the walls herald the new airport (Being built right behind these walls!). Here’s hoping they figure out some way to make travelers feel less like they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.

11:17 p.m.
Ah, Key West. What a quaint little town at the very tip of the ragged, spotty Florida Keys. It was dumping rain on the tarmac as we were bused out to the small turboprop that would take us to Key West from Miami. We climbed aboard and I listened to the portly, hibiscus-shirted middle-aged men sitting in the seats ahead of us opine loudly about the town. Then I passed out.

When I woke up, the sun was glistening on the ocean below as we descended on Key West. As the plane turned for final approach, I saw boatyards, elegant sailboats moored in the narrow channels clearly visible as dark patches of blue against the rich turquoise of the shallow seabed, and row after row of metal-roofed single-floor houses. It looked surprisingly low key.

I was enthused when we stepped off the plane and walked into the two-gate terminal. This place had a good, relaxed vibe. That all ended when, after five minutes of watching other people’s luggage whirl around on the carousel, the baggage handler stuck his head through the hatch and told us that was all the luggage there was.

Goddamned American Airlines lost our suitcases.

We waited for 15 minutes for anyone to show up at the American Airlines desk to help us sort things out. Evidently the employees, all two of them, were out helping load the commuter flight going back to Miami. They took a description of our bags, punched it into the system, and said most likely the bags just missed our flight and would arrive on the next plane coming into the airport. I gave my cell number and we went to the hotel. The taxi driver at the terminal took one look at our meager carry-ons and said, “Don’t tell me. They lost your luggage?”

Apparently that’s normal for Key West. It is normal for a fourth of the passengers to arrive on the island without everything they packed for the island.

So, mildly discouraged, we checked into our room and decided to venture out for food, expecting my phone to ring at any time with word of our newly arrived suitcases. We stumbled around Duval Street, the main drag, drank in the rows of high-end restaurants and self-parodic tourist trap chain stores. I tried conch fritters, ate three-fourths of a hamburger the size of my head at an outdoor restaurant and watched a wild chicken peck at the flecks of bacon on the floor before we wandered back toward the hotel.

10:45 p.m. Still no phone call. My battery is almost dead, and the phone charger is—of course—in my fucking suitcase. So we went to the drug store to buy the basic supplies that should have arrived with us on the plane: toothbrushes, toothpaste, sunscreen and contact lens accessories. Total cost to us: $37. We still have no fresh clothes.

I called the 1-800 number for the baggage claim at 11 p.m. No progress on finding our bags, but the electronic ladyvoice on the other end cheerfully informed me that most bags are found within 24 hours. Swell. We reported the bags lost at 6 p.m. Even if those clowns do find them, that still means we’ll waste one day of our vacation without camera, swimsuits, sandals or umbrellas.

The taxi driver told us the airline gives $50 vouchers for the inconvenience. He also said the last time it happened to him, he spent that $50 on getting drunk. This was the most reassuring thing I heard all day.

Tomorrow: Hemingway’s house and the shipwreck museums. In stinky clothes. And without pictures.

The vanishing ship graveyard

2007-04-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

It was Easter weekend, and since it was a foregone conclusion that we would sleep through the Easter parade. It's probably better to let things be foregone and wake up at 1 p.m. with a clean conscience. I rolled over and looked out our bedroom window, vista of a brick wall and the blinded brother bedroom window opposite. The daylight peeked out from the building's margin on the right, and typically, it was impossible to tell if the haze I saw through the pane was the atmosphere outside, the accumulation of four decades of dust motes between the panes, or the murk in my brain. A collective memory of 25 other Aprils said it should be balmy and warm.

So up and out of bed, and to the task of not completely wasting a day of leisure. Val and I had talked about going out to see some of the ruins I blogged about a year and a half ago, never thinking I'd be living within driving distance of them. When she brought it up the previous night, it almost seemed negligent of me to not have organized an expedition sooner. Guiltily, I realized it was time to sack it up and go see what I could see.

So we ate, dressed, and hopped in Beaker for the trip out to Staten Island to visit the ship boneyard out along Arthur Kill Road, a place where a century of New York's distinguished and workaday maritime past now rusts in the reeking mud.

I had read about this place on Metafilter back in 2005, and it rekindled an old fascination for American ruins, for spaces long forgotten or neglected. I realize that those of us born in the '80s and '90s haven't got a fully formed notion of all the things our society has jettisoned in the name of progress. I wind up with a weird sympathy for older generation, for whom I'm sure "normal" has all been scrapped, razed, bypassed and buried.

I guess it was appropriate, will all these thoughts of the ghostly past, that the boneyard lies on the other side of a graveyard that dates back to the 18th century. It's a small cemetery, and many of the gravestones are crumbling. Some of them have worn away to blank slates of flaking, brittle stone, like pastry crust jutting from the earth. Their identities are dying just like the identities of the ships, whose nameplates have largely been scavenged for scrap, novelty decoration, or simply dropped into the water.

We pushed through the trees and through six-foot-tall reeds down to the tidal flats along the Kill Van Kull, dodging an international array of empty liquor bottles, old tires and driftwood. Once I think I saw a vibrator. When we emerged, we saw a stately red tugboat, a series of rotted barges to its right, and an undifferentiated mass of larger hulls and collapsed docks to the left. There were plainly more ships and boats on the other side of the debris, but there was no way to access it--it's fenced off from the road and abuts private property with well-posted warnings against trespassing.

We were silent for several minutes, just taking in the rank smell of the mud, the accumulated garbage sitting among the crushed-down reeds, and the warped vessels. There was little else to do but take a few pictures and try halfheartedly to figure out where some of the boats came from.

It was actually better than I had thought. Many of the pictures available online (That last one is NSFW!) were taken by kayakers who could actually paddle among these fascinating hulks. The posts I had read from visitors on foot were less descriptive. I had not expected to get as close as we did to these ruins. But even though we did, it feels like this ground has already been well covered. I can write about my reactions to this place, but I have to work hard to not simply repeat what others have said. And this site was once much more spectacular. Two decades ago, there were probably twice as many majestic hulks here. Gradually they've been scrapped or eroded until nothing existed above the waterline. Even the story of the afterlife of these boats is ending.

If I ever want to be able to write about something that hasn't been exhausted by time and prying bloggers, I'm going to have to get information firsthand. I don't know if I'm lucky enough to be in the right place to overhear a good tidbit.

Meager update

2007-03-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Months have passed since the last blog entry, months that have blurred together and are punctuated now with funny television shows and occasional holidays, rather than spectacular sights.

I have been working at the newspaper, learning how to live with weekly deadlines and a dearth of spot news. It's different, and I feel more detached from the town since I spend most of my time scrutinizing budget documents. I hadn't realized how much I missed spot news until this week, when a house burned and the firefighters held a separate training exercise.

All of a sudden I was out of the office, watching chaotic things unfold, standing under the blue sky, realizing the slight chance of being crushed or soiled by flying debris. Driving home on Tuesday night after covering the fire that afternoon, I was struck with how little of myself I was able to put into the news item we released on the blaze.

It was one paragraph and a picture--all the available, relevant facts and a glimpse of the colors. There was nothing about the way the flames burst through a hole in the roof, the way a patch of snow sat intact just two feet from the fire, the way the spray from the hoses threw foam and debris a hundred feet in the air through the crumbling shingles, how the Kia Sportage parked in the side driveway was showered with broken glass and embers. There's no place in news for poetic details, and more and more in my own writing, I recognize the intense desire to get to the point. Digressions are painful. Clauses are unfortunate. Parallel structure is too close to editorializing. I'm beginning to seek aesthetic satisfaction from a good segue.

Even in this entry, I'm seeing no art. I'm thinking about the cloud of orphaned ideas that have been shambling around my brain during commute time these last few months. I'm thinking about how many of them will make it onto the computer screen. I'm not thinking about structure, or craft.

The world is immense. Ideas proliferate beyond our ability to cherish them. I need to find my muse again or I'm doomed to skid through my life flinching at the brilliance in others I don't want to see anymore.

2006-11-26T23:47:00.000-08:00

This is a post about decorating. I have never before paid this much attention to the subject, and its sudden importance now frightens me a little. But I know what it's been like when I didn't pay attention. I know how the haphazard ("bachelor," even, should I think about it) approach to furnishing and appointing a living space has its own peculiarly lonely drawbacks.

The apartment decoration is in full swing now. For the past two weekends we have been scouring Craigslist and Target for the essentials of apartment living. We now have pots and pans, flatware, utensils, some furniture and a television.

At each step of the way I wonder if there isn’t something more to it. Then I go to some New Yorker’s home and realize there is. Or at least I’m more and more afraid there is. Don’t get me wrong—we found some great stuff, and it looks great in our new home. I just wonder sometimes if there isn’t some “style” gene that went all recessive for me when I was gestating.

I went into a couple’s apartment near the East River today. Guy didn’t look that much older than me. The place was filled with esoteric things that somehow spoke in that unmistakable thrift-shop harmony: We sing to praise the ordering consciousness who rescued us.

When I buy shit at the thrift store, nine times out of 10 I bring it home, put it in circulation in my life, and I wind up looking like I couldn’t find the American Eagle or Pottery Barn. My second-hand shit doesn't sing. It sits there showing everyone its popped seams and chipped paint.

Here in this couple's apartment, next to the ceiling-length wardrobe housing his fifteen western shirts with effortlessly nostalgic colors and patterns, sits a 19^th-century parasol and a vintage f-hole Harmony guitar. They were finds. I wonder sometimes if I just don’t have the audacity to decorate properly, if the visions in my head of the ideal apartment jumble up too many motifs and philosophies until an 8 by 10 room is filled with a heterogeneous universe of dressers, couches, wardrobes and dinner sets.

Still, we press on. Not because I’m shaking off these insecurities and making bold decorating decisions, but because there are more fundamental decisions to be made: do we wait more than a MONTH before we have a table? No. And I am happy with what we find. I feel accomplished, but the grass is always greener on the other island.

We bought a very nice set of dishes at Target. I like the design, and feel a little tinge of aesthetic satisfaction each time I eat macaroni and cheese or cereal from them. But I can’t help knowing that somewhere out there (read: Manhattan), some investment banker is laying down plastic to purchase a dish set spawned from the childhood dream of some esoteric French ceramics genius; a set whose manufacturing process was so painstaking, so filled with crisp, rustic adjectives that Hollywood optioned the catalog description and made a movie starring Diane Lane.

Meanwhile, I know that I’m going to continue to bumble my way backwards into the world of cooking, gauchely buying the next-best spice at the local store while Ms. Investment Banker has Italian contractors build a stone oven in her otherwise all-stainless-steel kitchen so she can make authentic … uh… spinach fattaiers. Fuck. I’m just guessing here.

I also read an article in the New York Times about apartment hunting in the city (it must be a monthly thing at the Gray Lady), how many landlords reject applicants whose annual income is less than 45 times their monthly rent, how big, successful, rich people can’t get the places they want when push comes to shove. What monstrous parody of life and success are the landlords and credit companies perpetrating here? What monstrous parody is the Times printing each month?

I have driven all over Brooklyn now looking at furniture. I have dodged people of all ethnicities fearlessly stepping in front of Beaker. I have gaped up at majestic buildings and claustrophobic streets lined with the kind of trendy stores and restaurants I would like to walk out my front door and find. I think about the Salinger novels that could have been written about these places I know nothing about. I steer around the bigger potholes and protruding manhole covers, listening to the Velvet Underground, convincing myself I am a scrapper. We got an apartment in the space of a month. We are paying slightly less than my annual income for our monthly rent. I can actually park the car within walking distance of our apartment. But I still feel like these other people are a few light years ahead of me in terms of having it figured out. Oh well.

They said the answer was to become a dancer. Hold your head high.

Finding oneself in a kayak

2006-11-03T01:51:00.000-08:00

September 17:

We stumbled in to Port Orchard, Washington as we had (and would) at numerous other destinations: to sleep on a friend’s floor and swoon along the thin line separating genuine regional interest and cheap-laugh tourism.

It was a Sunday night, and we ate at a local brewery with my friends A. and W., with whom we would stay. Afterwards we followed them through a labyrinth of dark, evergreen-lined roads to their house. At one point we reached the edge of the treeline at the crest of a hill. Beneath us stretched Puget Sound and Seattle’s stately skyline mirrored in the black water. It was a breathtaking reward for a day’s worth of driving through light drizzle among the anonymous comb teeth of giant tree trunks.

The alluring lights of Seattle, almost tangible but distinctly distant, gave me my first pang of longing there, a familiar, mouse-eyed lust for something as unique in my own life.

So many of our friends live graceful lives, graceful in unexpected and perhaps unplannable ways. Often I see poetry in their prospects, in what the future must bring to them, how they must adapt or own up to mundane realities I’m sure they can’t completely escape in such exotic locales as Washington or Idaho.

I admire their bravery. One of Val’s friends moved with her boyfriend to Eureka, CA to be close to his son and his son’s mother. They had all been living near Sacramento, had an established social circle and habits, and jobs. Val’s friend moved to Eureka to make a go of it with her boyfriend, now fiancé, sans job, sans friends, and she’s well on her way in that quiet, mildly impoverished, sea-worn town.

It’s so easy to feel trivial, to marvel at the successes, the failures and the beauty of people—my friends and hers—and wonder how my story can ever measure up. With my bulging overnight bag, suitcase and suite of portable electronics, again and again I feel like I’m a toy nomad chasing after a wind-up dream in a Matchbox car, passing through the concrete lives of people who hike, who research, who tend gardens, who dress in historical garb for work, who own homes.

Which leads me back to A. and W., who own their home in Port Orchard. Husband and wife homeowners, and several months younger than I. They were among my closest friends in high school. W. helped me move two carloads of poorly packed crap into the dorms the summer of my freshman year in college. He stayed there with me for several days, sleeping in the lounge, confusing my floormates who thought he already had irreconcilable differences with his roomies.

At the time, he was contemplating skipping out on Navy boot camp to be with A., who was about to attend college at Humboldt State. He chose to honor his six-year commitment to the service, opting for a post aboard a nuclear submarine as a reactor technician. He never forgot about A., though, and after a couple years his home port was on Puget Sound and hers was, too.

It was a long, strange trip for those two. A. was a fervent hippie in high school (insomuch as the term applies to a person who didn’t go to Woodstock and who doesn’t continuously brag about how great her generation is). She always deplored war and violence (which meant epic arguments with my martial-minded best friend). But her decision to be with W. was about the man, not the uniform. In time, she became a Navy Wife, friends with the other wives whose husbands were at sea for months at a time, party to their celebrations and their complaints.

But A. is still green to the core. She’s attending Evergreen State College and working as a county building permits overseer, responsible for determining environmental mitigation. Apparently this is the crucial, much-maligned junction between the expansionists and the environmentalists, who accuse her of destroying homeowners’ dreams and of destroying the environment, respectively.

And they have a beautiful life together in a lovely, small home erected by a boat builder, with two cats in the yard and two trucks in the driveway.

W.’s life is in flux right now. Just a week before we visited—the week I had told them we were going to be there—he was discharged from the Navy. This was something he and A. had awaited with great anticipation, a final release from the unfortunate schedule and grim absurdities they had both endured for several years.

As we drove to Bremerton to meet them for dinner, I spotted the fleet of decommissioned Navy vessels moored at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Several retired aircraft carriers, USS Independence, USS Constellation, and USS Ranger, await their fates as museums and artificial reefs, along with one destroyer. When I mentioned the carriers to A., she said we might have toured one of them, had we arrived before W.’s discharge. Inwardly I lamented missing that chance.

This was the first time I had seen A. and W.’s home, and I wanted to catch up with them just as much as I wanted to explore the area. I got the chance to do both when the next day A. suggested going kayaking in the Sound.

I had never been kayaking. My familiarity with oar-powered watercraft comes from one (1) time at Disneyland paddling one of those giant canoes around the lake area haunted by a burning cabin and the Country Bear Jamboree; one (1) time trying to control an inflatable raft in the Santa Cruz surf; and the brief stories my father has told me about his solo canoe trips in the wilderness, mostly involving capsizing and the rat bastard raccoons that stole his dry sausage.

It was raining by the time we got to Gig Harbor, and though we all had packed extra clothes in the car for after the trip, none of us had expected to be out in a downpour. We stood on the party boat headquarters of the small kayak rental business, listening to the patter of droplets on the canvas roof, watching the once glassy surface of the small harbor erupt in a billion fleeting minicraters. The assistant, a young, friendly woman, welcomed us to think it over for a few minutes—just long enough for the weather to slacken and for us to get our resolve back.

The woman helped us each into a narrow, plastic vessel and secured our waterproof aprons around the raised lip of the cockpit. Then we were off. Recalling how I only succeeded in paddling in circles in the Santa Cruz surf, I was worried about looking dumb in front of my old friends. Fortunately, the kayak and its double-sided paddle was much more maneuverable and intuitive.

We paddled away from the dock, away from the lines of moored pleasure cruisers and peeling-paint wooden fishing boats. I told A. that this was my first kayaking trip. She was surprised and told me she grew up in kayaks.

“I know,” I said.

She looked back at me with a puzzled expression, as if to say how could you have never kayaked with me before? How could you have overlooked this for so long?

The same question was on my mind, among others. How could I not have done this sooner? How could this not have been a formative childhood experience for me? Did I somehow miss out on the chance to be rugged and outdoorsy growing up?

We headed further out, past the gorgeous two-mast schooner Kia Ora and toward the mouth of the harbor, where a tiny lighthouse sat on a sand spit. All along the eastern shore were immense, multistory vacation homes. On the flatter western shore, more modest homes came right up against the beach. Even these, I thought, are probably only affordable for millionaires.

This was the only discordant thought in my head, however. Anxieties about making a living, getting a job, being a success were muted by the silence and the immediacy of the water and the gentle ripples of our wakes.

We left the harbor and went out on the Sound. I gaped at the huge sky, divided from the water only by the chunks of rock and tree made symmetrical against the surface. Like so many other things, I’m clueless when it comes to sailing, but I realized I was out on the water next to a former Navy man. I asked W. if he had been drawn to the Navy because he wanted to learn nautical skills. He shook his head and told me he joined for the technical skills and for the relative safety compared to other branches of the armed forces.

“I don’t even know how to sail,” he said, adding few crewmembers learn anything about navigation or maneuvering. “A. knows more than I do.”

“I knew how to sail by the time I was in seventh or eighth grade,” A. called from her kayak.

“Do you think the Navy is suffering from the same recruitment problems as the Army?” I asked W.

“No,” he said. “If anything, it’s motivating more people to join because they won’t be in the infantry somewhere.”

I asked him if he thought the Navy is getting soft without major foes like the Soviet Union.

“They’re getting a little too, uh, emotional,” he said. “They’re maybe focusing too much on the feelings of their recruits. People going through basic training now get cards that will guarantee them 15 minutes without the drill instructors yelling at them. I didn’t have any trouble at boot camp, but I hear it’s undergone some grave changes since 15 years ago. I’m glad I didn’t go through then. I might not have made it.”

We drifted closer to the pebbled shore, near a dull wooden one-story house with a porch extending over the lapping tide.

“Are you going to miss anything now that you’re out?” I asked.

“The feeling of camaraderie, mostly,” he said. “When you’re on duty with one other guy for eight hours nonstop, you’re pretty much forced to talk to each other until you run out of things to talk about.”

I’m proud W. handled his service as well as he did. I don’t know what I would have done in his place, at sea and underwater for weeks at a time, only seeing sunlight on rare occasions when the crew got “steel beach” time atop the hull while the boat was surfaced [more on that and other submariner issues here].

As we paddled back in, I thought about how exciting it must be for W. to be on the cusp of a new and different life, to have a huge array of possibilities open up. I wondered if he had any of the fears I had about the unknown months to come, the shapeless time between jobs when you luxuriate in laziness and then lurk sullenly in the physical and mental chasm of home on a weekday.

But whatever happens, I believe W. won’t be awash in uncertainty.

“I feel like the Navy was one of those opportunities for me to really find myself,” he told me before collecting seashell fragments from the shallows near the lighthouse. “I’m glad I got it. That [experience is] college for most people. And if I go to college, I’ll get to have two of those times in my life.”

W. makes me wonder if I’ve ever really been tested or proven anything. I went to college, panicked as I wallowed around dazed in the immensity of literature, philosophy and history, and popped out the other side feeling almost like I had ducked whatever epiphanies there were to find. If this journey is anything, it’s a test. After going back to my hometown after college and attempting not to call it a retreat, I’m facing uncertainty. After two years of living at home, I’ve been carrying my world in a hatchback Honda for more than 3,000 miles. Now a foreign urban environment awaits. I hope what I find will give my life the kind of natural knowledge, the kind of grace I see in friends like A. and W.

Alive in the basement

2006-10-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are alive. No, we're not still in South Dakota--we're just lazy. I suppose there are blogs to be written about the next stops on our trip: Chicago, Kalamazoo, Cleveland, Virginia and Philadelphia, but we'll have to backtrack for those.

I'll cut to the most relevant stuff. We made it to New York on October 9, almost exactly a month after we left Paradise. We're staying in the basement of the house where my friend D. and his parents live. Thanks to their remarkable generosity, we've had a pretty good time of things so far. We've been taking the train into the city to search for apartments and jobs. We have leads on both, though I won't say more until something concrete happens.

New York is picturesque both in and out of the city. D. and his family live in Croton on Hudson, a village 42 miles north of NYC and just a few miles away from Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving's old stomping grounds. After the mega expressways we traversed across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the kind of tight, forested highways in this part of the state were like driving on another planet--and almost getting run off the road by the aliens when the lane width suddenly constricted.

There's a lot more to say, but I haven't organized my thoughts. The last two weeks have been a haze of craigslist advertisements, hour-long train trips and staying up until 4 a.m. for no reason. It's finally getting cold, and the red, orange and yellow leaves scrape across the roadway the way I remember from the 1989 Tim Burton version of Batman. On one hand it feels like our journey has ended. We've been stationary for two weeks. But on the other, we're not in the city yet. I know there's another chapter or two here before I can say "I live in New York," but I can't say for sure if they have begun yet.

I will say that the city is a lot cleaner than I expected, and the public transportation is excellent. The subway cars are well kept and the trains run all the time. Also, it's almost like Disneyland when you step off the 4 Train and there' s a full steel-drum band playing on the opposite platform to a throng of mesmerized commuters. I will have more to say. We have met people. I have had some excellent conversations with D. and his parents. But I should sleep now. Later today my electric guitar will come in the mail--and maybe I'll have Rolling Stones tickets.

On tourism, patriotism and other cliches

2006-10-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

October 1:

Lost in Middle America
I am in South Dakota. That right there is enough to give me pause. It’s time to start evaluating your life when you stop for a moment and realize you’re in South Dakota. How did I get here? Do I know where I’m going? Because if I don’t, there’s an equal measure of wilderness and desolation in every direction—empty streets patrolled by hungry deer.

We’re in South Dakota for two reasons, really. First of all, we came to see Mount Rushmore. Second, I-90 runs through it, and this is the road that will take us to New York. A happy coincidence that places us here in the Black Hills, right?

Except I look around and I get a strangely desolate feeling. I know I’m nowhere close to my destination, and yet I’ve been on the road for nearly a month. Through an exertion of funds and rudimentary navigational skills, I’ve come more than a thousand miles. All our West Coast friends are behind us now. There will be no more welcoming homes until we hit the Empire State. And so the daunting expanse of Middle America stretches in front of us, a queue of motor lodges at midnight in shuttered hamlets barely respirating on the fumes of the interstate.

That is, when there ARE hamlets. We drove through Wyoming two days ago. After spending the whole day in Yellowstone National Park, we realized we had to book across the whole state in order to reach Rushmore in reasonable time the next day. What followed was a mad dash in the dark.

We set out for Yellowstone’s northeast entrance at about 6:30 p.m. We had used up nearly all our gas driving through the park (we were 39 miles from Old Faithful; the gate was another 46 miles in the opposite direction), so we planned on getting fuel at the gas station marked on the park map next to the gate. We passed a much closer gas station, not wanting to veer from the plan. This decision would come back to haunt us.

I drove up, up and up, pausing for herds of bison and elk. It was remarkable to see them so close, so indifferent to motor traffic. Just like the three or four other cars inevitably delayed by the grazers in the road, we whipped out the camera and shot pictures like crazy.

By the time we got to Roosevelt Lodge, the location of the gas station, we were thoroughly sick of the shaggy, four-legged poop machines. We were further dismayed to see the gas station closed down and covered up. It was 29 miles to the gate and we had maybe 8 miles until the point where we always refuel the car. I set off toward the gate with a newfound urgency, knowing a.) the fuel would probably last, but not enough to take it slow, b.) this gate closed at 8 p.m., and it was already 7:30, and c.) it gets very cold in Yellowstone at night.

I raced across the darkening plains, eyes scanning desperately for the bison I knew would be blocking the road. Time and time again we got stopped by the woolly bastards. As if on cue, those grazing on the shoulder would dart in front of Beaker.

It was completely dark when we shot out of Yellowstone on Highway 212, only to find the highway was a decaying, two-lane blacktop through dense forest. We finally got gas (only because the closed gas station had a credit card machine) and resolved to drive until we hit a city.

Little did I know how rare those are in Wyoming, which sets new standards for desolation and loneliness. It turns out the entire state has fewer people in it than the city of San Francisco, and 5.1 people per square mile. The national average is 79.6.

I drove for 15 minutes on Highway 16 before seeing another car. There were no streetlights. There were no towns of any size. There were no traces of civilization outside of the signs warning us about open range cattle taking the place of the bison in the middle of the road.

We drove into some valley and then up some anonymous mountainside, seeing maybe five cars in two hours. The road was tight and winding, with 20mph switchback after 20mph switchback and never so much as a glimpse of a house, a settlement or even the terrain. Literally we were the only light pollution within 20 miles.

Our destination was Cody, the largest dot on the map for hundreds of miles. We arrived at 10 p.m., hoping to see a burgeoning metropolis. Cody has 8,800 residents—one-third the size of Paradise. Still, there were streetlights and restaurants and people, so it was a bit of an oasis. In fact, downtown Cody is nicer than downtown Paradise, full of historical buildings, free parking and restaurants. But maybe a small town like Cody can afford such a downtown area because it’s the only place people can stop for a bite to eat in northwestern Wyoming.

We thought about staying the night in Cody but realized that we needed to make it to Gillette that night, another 200 miles through another national forest. Remembering the terrain at Yellowstone and the previous stretch of road, I was not enthused, but we had little choice. We had to get to I-90 again, on the other side of this forest.

Again we plodded on. The lights of Cody soon faded below the horizon and all was black again. At first, though, we passed through several towns. Wyomingites seem to like brightly lit, flashing signs. It’s odd to drive through a completely deserted town at midnight and see a glittering minature strip gaily splashing color across the street and shuttered buildings as if there were someone to see it.

We arrived in Sheridan at 1 a.m., finally on I-90 and free of the punishing uphill climb through the mountains. The roads had turned red for some reason, perhaps the sand the transportation department dumps on the roads during winter carries this ferrous color. It was eerie.

Val drove the last hundred miles to Gillette, singing along with the CD player to stay awake. We were nervous about getting a motel room so late. Would a clerk be on duty? Would their policy allow for a guest at 2:30 a.m.?

The answer was yes, and they even gave us a discount. Good thing, too: the Motel 6 cost us $73 due to the late hour and a AAA discount. You read that right. Seventy-three dollars. In the room we looked at the regular pricing rate. For two people, a single room ordinarily costs $139. At a goddamn Motel 6.

My guess is that motels are expensive because there are maybe 10 of them in the entire state of Wyoming. Spare rooms are a hot commodity when a traveler’s other option is to pull off the road somewhere and hope he doesn’t freeze to death, fall into a giant strip mining pit, get eaten by bears or hit by a semi.

By comparison, South Dakota is positively metropolitan, with actual billboards, lights and towns. And fireworks stands everywhere.

The region encompassing Mount Rushmore, Keystone and Rapid City is tourist central. The landscape, already beginning to mutate into the jagged, weathered spires of the Black Hills, is festooned with bright billboards crowing the virtues of assorted seedy roadside stops. Come see Bear Country USA, with more than 100 bears! Come to Reptile Gardens, the largest reptile park in the country! Plunge into Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns (resplendent with photo of bright-eyed, curly-haired teenager with unnatural smile nest to a stalactite).

Not being a parent, I don’t know if the marketing is plying parents to shut their kids up by foisting some seedy entertainment on them, or if it plies kids to whine and pester their parents until they pull off and pay $50 to a bored man in a bear suit to shut them up.

Keystone is a town that thrives on this kind of tourism. Since they’re only a couple miles from Mount Rushmore, the entire town is a snare for trinket- and sweet-loving road warriors.

As we drove through the wide streets of Keystone, gawking at the animated marquees of motels and souvenir shops, Val noticed something.

“Is it just me, or are people really fat around these places?” she said.

“It’s not just you. Tourist traps are a siren song to the obese. And what’s worse, they peddle fatty foods, so it’s a vicious cycle. Fat people love tourist traps, and tourist traps make people fat.”

She chuckled.

“If you’re here, the odds are you’re middle-aged, from Middle America—and your middle is immense,” I finished.

And since Mount Rushmore is inherently patriotic, it’s also a natural fit for the kind of horrifying national pride paraphernalia frequently seen draped over some obese woman’s pendulous breasts—all flags, eagles, ribbons and fighter jets in ingenious new formulas. Let’s envision one now together: a bald eagle in the cockpit of an F-16 Falcon, a “support our troops” ribbon painted on the fuselage, tears streaming down his face, the smoldering World Trade Center towers behind him, all against a background of the stars and stripes. “Never forget.”

Oh, I’ll never forget. You can depend on that. I’m going to see that shirt every night in my nightmares.

But then of course there are landmarks that conjure up the charm and strength of America without the schmaltz and flag-waving.

Wall Drug in Wall, S.D., is one of these. Though it’s obviously a tourist trap, it’s also richly decorated with Western art...

Homoerotic cowboy fight, anyone?

... and a thorough history of the family who founded it.

All through the immense store there are photographs and newspaper articles. It’s like walking through the family’s scrapbook. That in itself is appealiing. There are photos of young men in World War II, in front of airplanes and artillery; of family hunters over six decades; of explorers in China and Africa and under the sea. I find this a much stronger testament to America than the more blatantly patriotic monuments. Here was a man whose strong entrepreneurial sense helped a drug store to survive and flourish in a small, remote town for more than 70 years. For his efforts he met congressmen, senators, presidents and astronauts. For sale in his gift shop we find more tractors and toy muskets than eagles and flags and such. All American dream, little of the fanfare. The fact that Hustead’s simple vision endures is inspirational.

Accepting the obvious
I am a tourist. It’s hard to admit that sometimes, hard to lump myself in with that band of jackasses tooling around the country in $160,000 motorhomes. But I’m out here trying to find the sights, just like everyone else. I can put on airs of superiority or self-awareness, but we drove to South Dakota so we could gawk at the four giant granite heads of dead presidents dynamite-blasted into a mountain, just like everyone in the flag T-shirts.

Of course, with a little careful trick photography, we could have just photographed ourselves with this incredibly picturesque soft drink vending machine in the parking garage and convinced everyone that we had braved heart failure, perspiration and diabetic coma to climb the stairs to the viewing platform itself.

Greetings from scenic Mount Fizzmore. (Almost good enough.)

Mount Rushmore is sublimely unsubtle, a gross, somewhat destructive symbol of our country. It was designed and its construction was overseen by a stubborn and fanatical sculptor who dreamed of not just the presidents' heads, but their whole torsos--and a hall of records underneath containing the founding documents of the United States (good luck getting the Smithsonian to agree to that, Gutzon). The project was completed in fits and starts and ran out of money when World War II began.

With just as much subtlety as the giant dead men's faces blasted into the rock, the monument has a promenade festooned with state flags and a constant barrage of patriotic muzak (and Avery Brooks doing a chimes-laden voice-over history of the monument). Though I don't like to play the tourist, it’s big and loud enough to get my attention. I can’t beg out of that one.

For those of you horrified by the sudden appearance of giant dead white men on mountain faces in sacred Native American territory, the Crazy Horse Memorial may either salve the hurt or amplify it.

Undertaken in 1948 by a sculptor even more fanatical and dedicated than Borglum, this monument is being constructed without any government funding, because its creator believed Americans' tax dollars shouldn't be used. Rather, he said, the people who wanted it would come forward to subsidize it. Nobody knows when it will be finished.

The monument was conceived as a response to the white-centric history embodied in Rushmore and is part of an incredibly ambitious plan for the land, which includes a Native American medical university. If you feel like paying the $20 to visit the museum (bus rides up to the mountain are an additional $4), there's a very informative video to watch.

I am a tourist, but then again, I'm not. Drawing distinctions between me and the fat dude with no chin and a peachfuzz beard staring just as intently at Lincoln’s face to see his mole—that becomes increasingly important as I spend more time out here, as I laugh and half-consider visiting the roadside attractions, as I ponder buying souvenis, as I eat greasy burger after greasy burger at places claiming to be world famous for something or other.

I am different, though. I am moving across the country, not headed back to the suburbs.

In some ways I’m the same. The more I see, the more pride I have in the American landscape. We’ve got amazing, jaw-droppingly dramatic terrain loaded heavy with the history of restless men and women trying to traverse it, tame it or transform it. The energy and ambition the people of this nation have collectively sunk into the land is remarkable.

We wanted to eat at Olive Garden for lunch today, since we’re burned out on burgers. We both felt a little bad for gravitating toward a franchise restaurant, but it was there and we didn’t have time to scrounge around in Rapid City for three hours in search of a local place.

It was 1 p.m., the end of the lunch hour, so we expected it to be fairly quiet.

Not so. The place was packed to the gills with locals (or at least South Dakotans, judging from their license plates). A dozen people were sitting in twos and threes outside, patiently reading menus. Inside every single bench was fillled. It was 20 to 30 minutes for a party of two.

Come on, South Dakota. Leave the cheesy yuppie franchises to weary interstate travelers!

***

October 2:

How does one write these things?
Now we’re in Wisconsin, having spent all day driving through Minnesota. It seems the air got muggy the moment we passed the state line.

We did not go to the SPAM museum. We dedicated the day to driving and I didn’t want to stray from the plan. I still felt a pang of regret. We passed up a free roadside attraction. There are times when I think that because we’re writing about a transcontinental voyage, we’re compelled to visit as many tourist traps as possible. I don’t know where this idea comes from. We never promised to do this before we left, and I have no idea if anybody’s reading this besides a couple of close friends and our parents, but I have the urge to entertain, to plumb the banal depths of our fair land for the sake of a good read.

But what would this really accomplish? I suspect that after the fourth or fifth day of forking over $20 to see the dessacated corpse of some abnormally large native animal, I’d wind up feeling both swindled and concerned that the true audience for hoplessly tastless roadside attractions is cynical, self-aware young people. And what would we get if we did stop everywhere? Some kind of kitsch trophy made from angel figurines and 8-tracks?

I’m drawing the line, so for the next few days, I’ll be talking about endless stretches of straight raod, yellowing treelines and dumbasses in minivans.

I get self-conscious just writing about the scenery. America’s beauty is an immense cliché perpetrated by travel agents, elementary school posters and PBS nature specials. Cliché as it is, it’s still beautiful. There’s so much open space, still so much meditative expanse devoid of housing tracts and Applebee’s restaurants, that you almost forget that these suburban things are rapdily assuming our national identity.

It’s all much better to look at from the window of a car at 70 mph than it is to stop and witness, however. I see corn fields and three things instantly run through my head: a romantic longing for a mythical, noble agrarian past; the kind of magical autumn sparks I remember from “A Charlie Brown Halloween” and corn mazes; and that scene with the crop duster from “North by Northwest.”

But behind the pretty views are people whose political views I don’t share, whose music I can’t stand, and who would probably look on me with scorn because I don’t know how to castrate a bull calf.

We’re dashing toward Illinois now, following the lead of our friend C., who is en route to a new job in Florida and who got through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin in a single day. He left at 6 a.m., though, while our routine gets us up and running at a leisurely 11 or noon. We’re trying to change this, but I always get to the motel room strangely enamored with the idea of a bed and a TV and a luxurious span of stationary time. We watch movies and TV, write, and generally disregard the fact that we will be sleeping until near check-out time.

Adventures in Spudland

2006-10-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

September 29, 2006

I continue to be amazed with the changing terrain of this country. We’ve been winding around the mountains of Montana for a few days, it’s strange how truly unfamiliar they are to me.

Leaving Walla Walla, Washington for Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, we saw how farmland had adapted itself to blend into velvety hills. The mountains looked soft enough to curl your bare toes in, as if it were shag carpeting. The different grades of farmland were pieced together like a puzzle. Colors ranged from burnt toast to wheat to molasses. From a distance it almost looked like marble rye bread. On the way to Idaho, we also saw the Snake River, a sight I had come to associate with cowboy movies. We couldn’t stop, but Jeremy got a picture it through my driver’s side window.

September 25, 2006

While in Idaho, we met up with our friend C. who took us on a wild journey through upper Idaho and Montana. But first we had to do something we had been joking about for months:

We went to visit the potato fields.

I’m still not entirely sure how potatoes are grown, but they involve the greens sticking out of the ground and one machine tilling up the soil and pulling up the tubers, and a truck sidling up next to the tilling machine to catch the flying potatoes from a slide. That’s right, flying potatoes.

“It’s really funny, you come out here after a harvest, and people are out there picking up the leftover potatoes,” C. said.

I, of course, was determined to be one of those people. So we waited until the potato truck was filled and was hightailing onto the highway to what I can only assume would be the OreIda factory, and I snuck out in the middle of the day through a potato field to find some renegade spuds.

Since they were spread all over on top of the soil, they weren’t hard to find. Unfortunately, they were literally small potatoes: four could fit in my tiny hand. They were like the size of baby reds, but these were your average spuds.

“We can bring those home if you want,” C. laughed at my tiny spuds. “Then you can eat the very potatoes you picked.”

I thought better of it and threw them back into the field, like a fish that didn’t quite meet regulation size.

September 26,2006

Yet another cemetery

One of the advantages of having a friend show you around town is the insider information that doesn’t come automatically in a guidebook or a pamphlet from the local chamber of commerce. An old unmarked cemetery fit that category to tee.

The cemetery was on the side of a one-lane road by some private housing and overlooked a freeway, which ran next to the lake. In fact, the cemetery was so close to the freeway that a 40-foot wall had to be erected to, as C. put it, “keep the bodies from falling out”

It was a long and narrow cemetery, and the roots of the growing trees sprawled throughout had laboriously moved the headstones.

There was no fence, and if it weren’t for C.’s warning and a brief glimpse of a headstone, I never would have noticed it. Some of the gravestones dated back into the 1800s. One of the headstones said the occupant wasn’t dead--he just sleepeth.

The view from the cemetery was breathtaking.

Red leaves from a vine clung to the chain link fence and the view of the freeway gently curving around the mountain was a sight I hadn’t expected that day.

A small jump from Idaho to Montana (the details of which you probably read in Jeremy’s blog, but I’ll go into a few strange details of my own):

While in Montana, we stopped at the Big Sky Mennonite Pantry that was run by Mennonite women. I had seen them before at Winco in Chico. The men dress normal with cell phones and everything, but the girls wear loose-cut blouses and skirts with floral parents and a bonnet pinned to their head. Most of the time I see them with closed toed shoes, but these girls wore sandals.

The inside of the store was the picture of thriftiness. It looked as though they shopped at a bulk store (Winco), packed up the goods in clear plastic bags and put their own label on it. You could get 10 pounds of oatmeal, every flavor of Jell-O, and more bread mix than I could count. There were also little tubs of spices that were extraordinarily cheap. It was twice the amount of usual bottle spice at the store, for between 95 cents and $2, depending on the type. While inside, we ordered homemade sandwiches, which were made on homemade bread complete with fork venting holes and meat sliced on their industrial slicer. Looking at the girl’s faces, I realized what C. had said earlier: these were beautiful girls.

Perhaps the lack of gloss that most girls have now has really turned my idea of beauty inside out. These girls were fresh faced, as if their skin had never touched makeup and experienced the pore clogging effects. Their eyebrows were unplucked and what little hair I could see under the bonnet had a healthy sheen of virgin hair that had never been ravaged by the dying process.

While we sat outside eating our lunch, which was delicious, a Mennonite girl came walking out holding a CD and got into her Buick. It was a strange sight to see. Jeremy described it as seeing a reenactor on lunch break. And that wasn’t too far off from the truth. I don’t know much about Mennonite culture, but I had to wonder why the men would wear normal modern-day clothing and the woman could no. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of religion, I can respect one that chooses to ignore modern day trends. But I don’t understand why they must emphasize the inequality between men and women.

While in Montana, C. took us to the Ross Creek Cedars, which was a patch of Cedars in the middle of a pine forest.

In the forest were strange sights like trees decomposing into peat and young saplings rising up from the dead tree. There were also what looked like a landslide of rocks laying on the ground that had moss and lichen growing on them. The lichen produced such a strong acidic secretion that it broke down the rock and turned it to soil. I never though I’d see rocks rotting away like that, but there you go. It was also evident that the break in the tree line, which was so stark it almost looked like nighttime in there, matched up directly with the growth of moss and lichen on the rocks.

After the Cedars, we got back into the car to look at the swinging bridge and the Kootenai River. While we were there, we saw a pair of kayakers practicing in the strong current. They carved their paddles in the water and spun like a river stone into different currents. I was in awe of it.

We had gone kayaking with Jeremy’s friends A. and W. in Port Orchard in the Puget Sound, and it took a little while to get a hang of the placid water with the occasional motorboat. The kayakers in the river in comparison were amazing, carving back and forth in the water. We were practically children splashing around in a paddling pool.

Alone on the road in Big Sky Country

2006-10-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

September 29:

We’re driving through central Montana now, en route to Yellowstone. The phrase “purple mountains’ majesty” keeps running through my head. I assume these are the Rockies in front of me right now as we head south on Highway 191. They’re beautiful—and mysterious.

“I like looking at mountain ranges that are unfamiliar,” Val said. So do I. It’s reassuring that the world is still this rugged and immense in some places; that I have not known all the mountains there are to know.

This is definitely wilder country than I’m used to. About half the big rigs that roar past are equipped with steel bars over their headlights and grilles: protection against the damage a wayward elk or deer can do at 60 mph.

But while it’s rural and austere out here, the people in this area have incorporated modern amenities. Farmers use electronic tags and GPS to monitor cattle. Grain silos are mouse-eared with satellite dishes.

I know it’s not written in stone anywhere that people in rural America have to live in primitive conditions, but still the presence of some of this technology is strange to me. This place with its vast prairies, bare hills and distant, snowy mountains reminds me as much of the frontier as just about anywhere I’ve been, and yet I can find wireless internet in just about any roadside motel.

While you can definitely get the amenities when you stop for the night, the trek can still be daunting. There are no streetlights along I-90 in Montana, only the taillights of the semis and the awareness of the unfettered landscape slumbering in the blackness. For this reason, I think the state focuses on communicating more frequently with the motorist. The green signs indicating the distance to the next few towns come more often than they do in California. Where you mark your progress to Redding or Los Angeles in 11-mile increments on I-5, in Montana these signs give you updates every three miles.

“No, you can’t see anything in any direction, no you don’t recognize the names of such places as Tarkio (indie music dorks may recognize the name from Colin Meloy's pre-Decemberists band) or Alberton, but you’re not lost. You’re making progress.”

Also, to combat the encroaching remoteness, everything here is world famous. Roadside bars, general stores, restaurants—put your mind at ease, lonesome traveler. YOU ARE CLOSE TO SOMETHING SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF THE STATE HAS HEARD OF BEFORE.

I love the views out here, but I can’t get in sync with the music. We ate at an Arby’s in Butte last night (no three pepper hot sauce here, dammit) and had to listen to a steaming heap of contemporary country.

“Cadillac Tears”? I tried to appreciate the dark humor in a revenge story involving perpetually buying Cadillacs with the alimony from a divorce, but what the song is trying to cast as poetic-justice female empowerment just comes off as a self-perpetuating cycle of victimhood.

Hey man, she’s cruisin’ down the street with custom wheels and leather seats
You know, she gets a new one every year
Aw, she’s crying big Cadillac tears

How many years does this woman have to dwell on the failed marriage and the man who hurt her? Isn't this celebrating the self-perpetuation of a culture of victimhood?

We talked about modern country music last night on the way from Butte to Bozeman. The myth of authenticity pervades most forms of popular music, but it’s especially potent in country, where current artists and songwriters continue to peddle a hoary false dichotomy: country versus city; dirty pickup versus BMW; poor versus rich; simple versus sophisticated; authentic versus phony.

Nashville is a big city filled with talented songwriters and musicians. It’s a pillar of country music. The people recording this music aren’t playing out on the back porch with pawn shop-bought Stella guitars. They’re playing brand-new Fenders and Gibsons in state-of-the-art studios with professional musicians. It’s sophisticated, and that’s OK. Slickness has long been a part of country (Nashville didn't just spring up in the 1980s as a songwriting and recording mecca). We don’t have to write artless lyrics and dial up the twang to compensate for the fact that we make slick music. Lyrics can be more artful than “she thinks my tractor’s sexy.”

I can’t stand the saccharine sentimentality in some songs; the disregard of cadence in others (when I hear Gretchen Wilson sing “keepin’ it counTRY,” I want her to drown in a mudhole).

But I’m moving to New York, so what’s the point of opining about this? I won’t be a ranch hand or truck driver anytime soon.

Still, it bothers me how these artists often sing about leering caricatures of their listeners—and how the listeners eat it up and cheer for more.

Flashback fragment (sorry, no pics)

2006-10-06T21:22:00.001-07:00

September 13:

I’m writing from a motel in Medford, Oregon, after spending two days in Eureka. Well, two nights and one day in Eureka.

We finally left Paradise on Monday, Sept. 11. Packing the car for the trip was both easier and more difficult than we thought. It took the whole day Sunday, yes, but we wound up with a sliver of rear window visible in the mirror—a lot more than I expected. It was dark when we finished packing, though, so we slept the night at home before leaving.

As we were driving out of Paradise Monday afternoon, Val said, “This is the last time for a long time we’ll be driving down the Skyway.” I realized it was true as I looked out the window at the excavators making a mess of the formerly wooded stretch of land west of Neal Road. I’m wondering how long it will take the quilting stores that invariably set up shop in these places to go belly up.

***

We drove to Redding and took Highway 299 to Arcata. This was the same road we tried to drive at the end of July for a camping trip. That time we were turned back at Weaverville by an immense wildfire, forced to divert to the intestine-like (and intestinal) nightmare that is Highway 36.

This time the road was open and we passed through without incident, though smoke hung heavy in the air and the still-high sun was a dull red disc. Highway 299 curves through a river canyon, and as we rounded one downhill curve toward the bottom, we were confronted with a face of sheer, jagged rock blackened by the blaze. We had plenty of time to admire its dissonant majesty as we followed the Forest Service fire truck down. At the bottom of the canyon we found all the fire camps, dwelling places for the firefighters who extinguished the wildfire. There was still plenty of activity, many tent villages and trucks. It reminded me of the week I spent during one childhood summer at a fire camp when my father was working as a dispatcher. The details are hazy, but I remember there was a “Creek” in the name of the settlement (Brush Creek, maybe?), and I remember staying at a pleasant house belonging to a local family. I can remember sitting on a swing in the backyard near the dense treeline, eating Reese’s Pieces for perhaps the first time in my life.

So much time has passed since I was sitting on that swing. I remember hanging out at the camp during lunch, watching the grimy firefighters come in for their picnic sandwiches and sodas, thinking, I can be one of them someday. Back then I think part of me felt a career with the Forest Service was inevitable. I had a blood tie to these environments. At some point, though, I turned nerd.

Driving down the road Monday, watching the rows of dome tents whiz past my window, I thought about being a firefighter: where you have to train for it, how you get hired, and what the age limit is. I thought about my chances of ever doing what I had anticipated as a child. I don’t think they’re spectacularly good.

I could still do it, I’m sure. I’m smart enough to learn, and my body is intact (if untrained). But I’d have to crave it enough to focus, and that’s hard. I just read The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, which is a book just as much about wanting to feel passionately about something as it is about pretty flowers. I recognize Orlean’s longing, and kindle a small fear of forever being a dilettante.

But while I think about the satisfaction that might come from mastering a certain field and satisfying the child who dreamed about donning the yellow Nomex suit someday, I also think about sacrificing my potential to do other things.

It’s an ironic stasis I’ve created around myself. I’m too scared of wasting my life on any one thing to actually do anything, so by default I’m wasting my life.

We finally got to Eureka after 8 p.m. Val said her friend recommended a Chinese restaurant along Highway 101, just as we drove past the parking lot. Though I had only been driving for five hours (and certainly would drive more in coming days), I felt fatigued and afraid of a long, fruitless search for an appealing-looking restaurant. I turned the car around—a left turn and then another left onto the divided northbound lanes of 101—and headed back, only to find there were no left turns for miles. Silently we drove toward Arcata, waiting for any kind of opportunity.

Ten minutes later, we were at the restaurant. It was cold outside. I was tired, keenly aware of the fact that my most important worldly belongings were packed in a compact car in a strange town. We walked in, sat down, and ordered some very disappointing Chinese food. Mongolian beef is supposed to be spicy. And completely cooked.

National parks and dynamite sculptors: We are tourists

2006-10-03T01:21:00.000-07:00

It's late at night and I've got four pages of assorted travel musings saved on the little portable word processor we keep in the car, but I'm too lazy to run down there, get it, and figure out how to transfer it to the laptop, so those things will have to wait, just like my post about kayaking Puget Sound with W. and A.

Now for a quick update. It's October 3, and we're in Rockford, Illinois. We drove through Minnesota and Wisconsin today, weathering the most vicious thunderstorm I have ever seen. We crashed here and watched TV all night, savoring the feeling of being dry and not cooped in the interior of a Honda Civic carrying all our worldly belongings.

We have seen Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument and Badlands National Park. We will write about these things--or transfer all the word-processed files--shortly. For now, here are some teaser images of Yellowstone.

The bacterial plate at one of the park's many thermal pools.

Big bull elk doesn't realize pedestrians are supposed to walk on the LEFT side of the road.

Bison! These woolly bastards were everywhere we wanted to be. Like the middle of the road out of the park at nightfall.

Old Faithful. We waited a very serene 25 minutes with about a hundred other people for the eruption. It was impressive.

The view as we left the park. Behold the full justification behind all the cliches of America's scenic splendor.

For Katie

2006-09-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

We asked for input on what we should photograph on our way. Our friend Katie was the only one who responded to us. She wanted to see a car with both Jesus-related and Democrat paraphernalia, a Delorean and Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap.

We've been on the lookout for all these things. So far we've only found one. So here it is, Katie. Thanks for the comments.

Gin-u-wine PBR on tap at The Grail, one of the sleaziest (read: cement gargoyles out front, bad rap music bumping inside, four patrons, one chunky girl beer-bonging it while standing on the bar) Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.

Another round in Seattle

2006-09-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

It’s our last day in Coeur d’Alene Idaho, and it feels like it’s our last day in a safe harbor. We’ve been lucky so far, we have had friends all over the western side of the country, and so far, we have only had to spend two nights in a motel since we left over two weeks ago. So now it feels like we’re about to take off on a true adventure, one with out a safety net of our friends and their generous offers of laundry services and wireless Internet.

But it's time to backtrack a bit, since I have been so neglectful of this poor blog.

Seattle: Part Deux, September 20, 2006

Jeremy and I woke up late once again and, wouldn't you know it, we missed the ferry. Not wanting to waste another chunk of the day waiting for the next one to come at 3:30 p.m., we decided to brave the freeway and parking circus and drove to Seattle. On the way over, there were helpful little signs of the Space Needle and other landmarks to guide us to our destination. Luckily, our two goals were in the same spot The Space Needle and the Experience Music Project.

The EMP, in short, looks like an architectural joke, or perhaps six artists who couldn’t decide on a central theme for the building. But its chaotic nature seems to conjoin nicely with the musical theme, after all, isn’t chaotic music more interesting?

Another amusing thing about the museum was it shared the building with a science fiction museum that loudly and proudly played the haunting music to the X-Files. There were also flags for an art exhibit that had such obscure statements like "Liechtenstein Vs. Monet." How do artists, dead ones at that, duel may you ask? I have no idea. I just wanted to see the music exhibit.

Inside was a detailed explanation of the evolution of rap and hip hop. It defined both forms of music, which have become synonymous over time. Rap: a rapid form of lyrical speech. Hip Hop: a combination of musical forms including rap, scratching, percussion, etc. There were voyeuristic photographs of people, such as the late '70s rap group Fantastic 5, practicing their dance moves and poses in their living room before a live performance.

There was also an exhibit on the evolution of guitars, which Jeremy drooled over, as well as the guitar Eric Clapton had played to perform “Layla” with on the Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album.

One of the larger displays was dedicated to local boy hero Jimi Hendrix. The legend of Hendrix was not lost on me. While I was exploring the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman two years ago, I came to learn of the ghostly image of the man on a cement wall on campus. Squinting at it, you could actually make out the eyes, nose and afro of Hendrix. As rumor had it, it was an old concert poster which had gotten wet and stained the cement decades ago. I also remember my short time as a music major, when the teacher told us that Hendrix actually had a four-inch thumb, and could manipulate the sound of a guitar that few others could replicate, just because of the sheer size of his hands. What I hadn’t realized was how young he was when he died. He was only 27. When I was 15 and just starting to get into music, I thought 27 wasn’t a completely unreasonable age to die. But now I’m 25, and I have accomplished nowhere near what Hendrix did, and probably never will. I have to wonder what other musical landscapes he would have explored had he lived to a retirement age.

The EMP also had a great costume display with outfits from Sonny and Cher, members of B-Unit, Elton John, Michael Jackson and dozens of others.

After the EMP we went to the Space Needle, and scoffed at the price to ride to the top: $14. How do they justify the cost you may ask? They don’t. The ride is short and the flags meant to entertain tourists while they wait are pun heavy and poorly written. There were more typos than the average alternative weekly. And not just the flags, the wall displays with the condensed history of the Space Needle (which was once the tallest building in the country, and is now only the seventh tallestin Seattle) were cut off literally in midsentence. However through all the gibberish, I did learn the Space Needle was built for the World's Fair in 1962, and that one of the advertising slogans was that it was a “Restaurant in the Sky.” Well the campaign worked and the Space Needle paid itself off in a matter of months. This fact only made me even more pissed off about forking over $14 for an elevator ride.

While we were up there, a young couple smiled and laughed as their 2-year-old child began screaming their head off. Slightly horrified by the situation and inwardly disgusted by our immediate reaction, we fled the indoors for the frigid outer ring and looked at the views, which included the EMP.

After hitting the touristy section of Seattle, we stumbled upon a section of town called Uptown. It was a lovely downtown area with more Thai restaurants than I have ever seen in a square mile. And it had a great record store called Easy Street Records, which just so happen to have a live show when we walked in. The band was New Found Glory and they were playing an acoustic show as a warm up for their upcoming tour for their album that had been released the day before. NFG was a little whiny for my taste, but the free show reminded me of the days of going to Tower Records, or some other record store in Sacramento to listen to the underage shows. Oh to be 15 again.

After the show, it was a slow drive back to Port Orchard, and a satisfying night of sleep, because the next day, we were to hit Ellensburg and Walla Walla.

Where Banjo lived and where Wolfman died

2006-09-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

We headed out of Washington on September 24, headed to Coeur D’Alene, Id. and my friend C., where we found death and beauty in equal measures.

C. lived in Chico and Paradise for a long time, attending Chico State University for his business and finance degree, but he was raised in various places in Idaho. He used to tell us all these stories about the rugged, rural lifestyle, like doing e-brake 360s on icy driveways in pickup trucks. I had never been to Idaho, so I could only imagine what any of these stories actually looked like.

But finally we had arrived. After trekking across the part of eastern Washington that looks suspiciously like California’s central valley...

...we crossed the border and began to see the thick strands of towering pines, the immense, glassy lakes and huge, smoky hills.

The other thing we immediately began to see were housing developments. Farmland is being consumed at a rapid rate by huge, square colonies of homogeneous homes and scraggly deciduous saplings. This is a land tamed by loggers and farmers, where everybody hunts, where people own huge, lifted pickups and two quad runners just for that purpose. Still, somehow, the architects dictate that the ideal community is something like Levittown on steroids—flat tracts, square streets, tiny backyards. If anything is going to tame Idaho, it’s the housing. As we drove through Coeur D’Alene and its neighboring burgs, C. pointed out the potato and wheat fields that the farmers no longer own, cultivated by the developers until they feel like paving them over; the lumber mill quietly awaiting demolition to make way for more three-bedroom Shangri-Las.

This is a land where they race riding lawnmowers (that episode of "King of the Hill" is grounded in reality), where each town has its own amateur stock car league, where muzzleloader season leads into bowhunting season, which leads into rifle hunting season.

And they hate Californians. The last decade has seen a tremendous influx of the West Coasters seeking a more relaxed rural life (or perhaps just a decent price on a home larger than a breadbox).

“Lots of them, if they see you have a California license plate, will flip you off,” C. told us, glad that he got Idaho plates on his new car.

Moreover, Idaho is a conservative bastion, rife with George Bush bumper stickers. Likely they see Californians as liberal invaders.

Nonetheless, the Californians are coming—and millionaires from all around. Coeur D’Alene is refashioning itself into an upper-end resort town. It already boasts the longest floating boardwalk in the world—3,300 feet—on the shore of Lake Coeur D’Alene, where multi-hundred-thousand-dollar powerboats float tantalizingly close.

High-rise condominiums are shooting up downtown, and along a golf course with a legendary floating green, one developer is building two towering condo buildings which will offer units for $6 million apiece along with an agreement to pay an annual $160,000 membership fee for the course.

They’re numbers that boggle my mind. Obviously I don’t think like a millionaire, but the thought of spending more than the annual income of an upper-middle-class family so some teenager can open a fancy gate to let me onto a giant lawn makes me cringe. I will admit it: I don’t know the true nature of extravagance, but I still think I could put that $160,000 to better use each year.

Before we get to the Idaho wilderness, I should explain that 85 percent of C.'s stories involve death, murder, disfiguration, or some combination of the three. As part of his Coeur D'Alene tour, he showed us the Denny's where in 2005, authorities caught up with Joseph Edward Duncan III, who allegedly murdered a mother, a father and one of their sons before kidnapping their other son and daughter.

"He's right in there," C. said that day when we drove past the Kootenai County Public Safety Building, "in a holding cell awaiting trial."

"What's the holdup?" Val asked.

"They're trying to get an unbiased jury together," C. said, "which is hard, because everybody's heard of it. It was out as an Amber Alert when he kidnapped that girl. In fact, if you look around on the cars here, everyone's got a bumper sticker that says 'Kill Duncan.' That's what it's all about."

None of us said anything for a minute.

"He's going to die," C. said.

"He deserves to," I said.

"Yeah, but the thing is, he's not going to get a fair trial here."

"So why don't they move the trial?" Val asked.

"Nobody cares," C. said. "He knows what he did, and he didn't ask for it to be moved. He doesn't care, either."

After Monday’s tour of Coeur D’Alene, on Tuesday we drove north to explore a wilder Idaho where C. spent his early years. Highway 95 took us up across Lake Pen d’Oreille, a massive, cold lake deep enough for the Navy to allegedly test submarines.

In Sanpoint we saw the Litehouse Dressing Bleu Cheese Factory. C. told us how the famous dressing company got its start as a lakefront restaurant before its owners chose to focus just on the condiments.

We headed farther north, out past the towns with supermarkets and into country where the boomingest business is ranching and custom butchering. Out here the primary product seems to be old trucks. Every yard, lot and quarry is full of them.

The land here is beautiful, nestled between towering hills and the Cabinet Mountains, bordering lakes and valleys, all clear and pristine. But it's not fancy living.C. summed it up, classified ad-style: "Beautiful doublewide, on 100 acres, lakeside view. Cinder blocks for your car included."

And we hadn't even reached Clark Fork yet, the dusty little town where C. attended high school. On our way into town we passed a squat stone cabin with a tin roof flying a tattered Confederate flag.

"See that?" C. said. "That's where a former Hell's Angel named Dirty Don lives." Dirty Don, it seems, shot his wife's lover in a bar called Out of Bounds.

"We always called it Out of Bullets," C. said. Ironic.

C. also went to school with Dirty Don's children. DD's son, Banjo (that's not a nickname), dropped out of high school when he was a freshman. Now, C. explained, he drives around town in a huge pickup sporting a thousand-pound homemade wooden bumper with the words "fuck you" painted on it.

That kind of omnidirectional defiance and posturing was starting to make sense to me. The wilderness out here is unbelievably immense, a constant reminder of how small and frail we actually are. The toughness, the violence, the fixation on explosives C. told me about, all suggest the need to be heard and feared.

As a teenager, C. and his friends like to make acetylene bombs using the welding gas, oxygen and garbage bags.

"You had to walk real carefully with it, because any static spark could set it off," he said. "Then you'd light the fuse and run like hell, because if it went off when you're too close, it could destroy your eardrums."
It's an attempt to be big against the inconceivable bigness of the wilderness. You're big, you're bad. You make the mountains ring with your sound. You make tourists cringe when they see your truck.

Clark Fork is a small, remote town. C. remembers one incident that brought everyone together.

"This guy went missing in the woods, and the entire town went out to search for him," C. said. "We did a grid search of this entire mountain. The whole football team went out there. My dad was on his weekend, and he spent days up there. Finally, after six days, they found him."

"Alive?" Val asked?

"Nah," C. said. "He tripped, fell off a cliff and landed on his head."

As we continued on, C. told us we were driving on one of the most dangerous highways in the country. As we passed homemade cross after homemade cross, I saw what he meant. One of the most notable we saw was nestled along the base of a jutting cliff. It was an ankh placed in memory of "WOLFMAN."

Death was even more abundant in Montana, where the state evidently erects a small white cross on a post for each person who died in an accident on the highway. We passed these with alarming frequency, counting seven little crosses in one particularly deadly mile.

“When we were little, we used to count these instead of slugbugs,” C. said, “since there’s no VW Beetles out here.”

What northern Idaho and Montana both have is an almost sickening abundance of breathtaking rugged vistas here. I could photograph every bend in the road. But then we’d never get to whatever sight we’re actually traveling for. I think I ought to have a more sophisticated camera. I think I should have taken photography courses so I might know how to exploit the riches pouring through my viewfinder. But as it stands, I have limited time, limited equipment and limited knowledge. Bear with us, and maybe the thought that it’s Val or me behind the shutter will compensate for the lack of originality or the iffy composition.

We drove to see the Ross Creek Cedars, an incongruous forest of the ancient trees amid the pines.

C. remembered visiting them as an elementary school student.

"John Bidwell must have been here," he said.

"Was Bidwell a big Cedar Guy?" I asked.

"No, but he planted every non-native plant under the sun."

After we wandered around in the forest and took a bunch of totally artistic pictures that all turned out like blurred crap, we got back in the car and drove up to what C. called the swinging bridge. This turned out to be Kootenai Falls, a breathtaking view of the Kootenai River along the railroad tracks.

As a bonus, we got to watch a pair of kayakers fight the current and dodge their way through the foam, howling like wild men the whole time.

We followed the kayakers downriver, walking on a trail along the cliffside until we came to the swinging bridge C. was talking about. It was a cable suspension bridge spanning the sheer cliffsides of the Kootenai. As we approached, we noticed a sign that said "5 persons maximum." Not exactly encouraging. I hoped Val, C. and I weighed less than the theoretical persons the engineers had calculated for.

We did.

After walking back across (nervous the whole time about one of us tripping and sending us teetering over the waist-high fencing), we began the drive back to Coeur D'Alene, counting the tiny roadside crosses in the fading light.

Don't litter in Washington

2006-09-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

We're in Idaho now, about to light out toward Yellowstone. Before we get to our impressions of the Gem State, there's one last thing about Washington.

Several times we encountered signs along the freeway with this menacing message: “LITTER AND IT WILL HURT.” These weren’t billboards. They were official Washington State road signs making unclear promises about the consequences for tossing a Burger King wrapper out the window.

“Maybe the sign was designed by environmentalists, and they didn’t realize the last part got cut off,” Val said. “‘Litter and it will hurt the earth.’”

“Or maybe the state is run by the mafia,” I said.

Turns out it’s actually a focus group-tested campaign to reach the people who do litter. The sad truth is that they found the best way to do it is to emphasize the penalty: hefty fines for those who get reported and caught. So think twice before you toss that cigarette out the window on I-90, you sociopath. It could cost you lots of money.

Next up: IDAHO!

Philosophical Fish Mongers

2006-09-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

September 23, 2006

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Walla Walla, Wash., trying to figure out once again how I can catch up with this blog. It seems every night we return to our home base (whichever friend or motel room that may be) from a day of adventures, I’m too tired to actually recount them in a literary fashion.

Luckily, Washington seems to be one of the most plugged-in Internet states I’ve ever visited. This may change, since we have roughly a dozen states to go, but for now, I’m reveling in the convenience of having three wireless Internet connections to choose from in one sitting area. So yes, we’re making this a low-key day and catching up on the blog.

Walla Walla. The name rolls around my tongue like a jawbreaker I don’t have the heart to bite down on. All I knew of the city was it had a college (three, as I later learned) and was known for a sweet type of onion that can only grow in this city. For some reason, the soil content has not been replicated in other areas, and so the onions turn from sweet to almost ordinary onions if in the wrong soil. But I digress…

There is a local record store here called Hot Poop. This is not a typo. According to a newspaper article about the store from 2003, the store has been in Walla Walla since the ’70s and the name is commonly mistaken for the 29-second Frank Zappa song. It is in fact a play on the term for new music, “hot pop,” which according to the owner, can quickly turn into "hot poop." The awnings by the stairs to the second story are covered with autographed photos of artists such as James Brown, Xzibit, Sound Garden and Nikki Six of Motley Crue. They all seemed to revel in writing “Thanks for the support Hot Poop,” especially Danny Elfman on the Oingo Boingo photo, whose loopy scrawling handwriting is as distinctive as the musical scores he has written for movies and TV shows since the group disbanded (the most well known being The Simpsons).

I will now go back a few steps on our trip, since, of all places, Seattle should not be ignored.

September 19, 2006

Is this it? I thought as I stood in front of the Pike Street Fish Market in Seattle. Where were the flying fish? Where were the hysterical customers waiting to get their fix of fresh fish? Instead there were a bunch of idle tourists, apparently thinking the same thing I was thinking.

It was clear that this was not a local fish market anymore. There was even a self-help book supposedly written by the fishmongers. The sign claimed that for $11.95, my life could be improved exponentially with the philosophies of a fishmonger. How did it get to this point?

***

Jeremy and I had woken up characteristically late at A. and W.’s home in Port Orchard, Wash., immediately regretting being as lazy as we are since becoming unemployed almost two months ago.

W. mapped out their usual plan for exploring the city of Seattle: catch the ferry and walk immediately to the downtown area of the market place. It took almost 40 minutes to drive to the port itself and an hour on the ferry to cross to Seattle.

Somehow I had imagined Port Orchard being right below Seattle, but apparently it was more like leaving Paradise to visit Sacramento: not a long trip, but not the most convenient thing to do.

When the sturdy ferry lumbered to the station in Seattle, it was already 4:30 p.m. I knew this was going to be a two-trip endeavor to see the entire city. After breathing in the damp air and feeling the chill through our coats, we immediately realized why Seattle was known for being populated by coffee drinkers. We wanted a cup…immediately. But instead, we had to find food, or else I would have turned into an incomprehensible babbling idiot.

I let Jeremy, with his far superior sense of direction, guide our way through the downtown area and directly to hole-in-the-wall food establishments. My blood sugar was crashing so rapidly I could have scarfed down a Noah’s bagel in 3 minutes and collapsed into a happy food coma. Instead, we went to Jasmine Thai Moroccan, a fusion restaurant of sorts where it appeared the husband was Moroccan and his wife was Thai. Although it was deemed a fusion restaurant by several media reviews, they appeared to have only two Moroccan dishes and the rest were Thai. More like food separatism really, but judging by the curry dishes, it was satisfying nonetheless.

After we finished our meals, we wandered around the market with other tourists. There was a coffee shop called Local Flavor that immediately triggered a stream of snarky comments in my mind.

“Local Flavor…voted most popular coffee shop by tourists”

“Local Flavor… you may remember us from such travel guides as Lonely Planet…”

“Local Flavor… sit down and see a real Seattleite!”

I’ll be honest, I didn’t take the time to ask the patrons where they were from or check their IDs. I was basing this assessment on the almost bewildered looks of some of the patrons, who looked beyond the average age of hipster coffeehouse residents, and the incessant people watching. Walking by, I felt like people were wondering, “Is she a Seattleite?” I’ll equate it with picking out a toupee from a crowd.

There were also of course plenty of Starbuck’s, the most popular coffee shop on the planet. But Seattle is also home of the flagship shop. The first. The one that has the original emblem of a two-tailed mermaid with sagging breasts: a signature look that hasn’t been homogenized and put through focus groups for the caffienated. We didn’t go in. But we did like many other tourists did, and took a picture.

***

Back at the Fish Market, I was getting frustrated about standing around apparently waiting for nothing, surrounded by tourists. I even looked for some sort of sign for show times. Could this really have turned into a staged performance? Only done when fish came to the market or someone ordered a fish? I had to know.

“Excuse me,” I said to a fishmonger who appeared to be in his mid-20s. “When is the fish throwing?”

“You gotta camera?”

“Yeah,” I said as I dug into the abyss that is my cargo purse.

He told me to stand just diagonally from him and he dug his hands into the crushed ice and grabbed the fresh fish, solid with cold, and flung it into the ready hands of his fellow fish monger comrade with butcher paper waiting.

There were yelps, there was singing, this was exactly what I had wanted to see since I saw it on the intro to The Real World: Seattle.

The tourists’ cameras began to flash.

“Look, there they go,” said a mother to her child.

The camera wasn’t fast enough. I was desperately hoping they weren’t going to stop before I could get the setting right, when suddenly I saw a fish flying right at me. It was like what I heard from photographers about the protection behind the lens: how they used the camera as a shield or filter for all the atrocities they record. But this was not carnage or even bullets flying near my person. This was a 25-pound frozen fish aimed at the camera lens and more importantly, my head behind it.

Jeremy and I barely turned to the right and the fish went whizzing by my left ear and landed on the ground with a lofty puff. Polyester. It was a god damn stuffed fish.

“HEEEEEYYYYY!” the fishmongers yelled in triumph and their tip jars were filled. Another tourist took the bait.

I couldn’t stop laughing.

I kept laughing as more tourists began gathering around to see the commotion.

“When’s it going to happen?” said a 5-year-old to his mother who had just arrived.

“I guess we’re going to have to wait till someone else buys a fish,” she said.

Grapes, onions and the rural life

2006-09-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

September 22:

We’re just outside Walla Walla now, after being delayed in our departure from Port Orchard.
We took my close friends W. and A. out to lunch Thursday in gratitude for letting us stay with them. They suggested a very nice sandwich shop, where Val had an unfortunate allergic reaction to the nuts in the pear chutney (is there something I don’t know about chutney?). We spent the rest of the day recovering.
By nightfall we were on the road, though. I figured there was no way we would make it to Walla Walla before crashing for the night, so I planned on getting us to Ellensburg, about halfway there.
Beaker snarled up the winding Highway 18 in third gear, passing semis unable to reach 60 mph. It had rained the last few days, but this night it was clear, and the evaporating puddles created clinging rafts of steam just above the roadway. With the thick forest obscuring any ambient light [pollution], things got very eerie.
We finally stopped to eat “dinner” in Cle Elum (looks like some half-assed anagram for something), a town near the summit. It was 9:30, but it felt like 2 a.m. We found a Burger King and sat down to eat. We were the only non-drive-thru patrons. For the rest of the night it would feel as if we were alone in a tarnished fast-food world, reluctant patrons of a vast, surprisingly uncomfortable hospitality machine designed for the massive clans in vans who were all by now in $150-a-night motel rooms they reserved two weeks ago.
I hit the gas as we hit the downhill grade, trying to get to Ellensburg before 11 p.m.
We made it, but only to find the town consisted of two highway offramps and about four hotels, all of which were crammed with gargantuan trucks, buses and station wagons.
“WELCOME CONTRACTORS AND SURVEYORS ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE,” all the marquees in town read. There were white F-250s in every parking lot to prove it, and no single-bed rooms left in the Comfort Inn. The clerk offered us a smoking suite, which we wrinkled our noses at. We finally settled on a local motel, there for 35 years according to the clerk at the neighboring Holiday Inn Express, paying a reduced $72 AAA rate for a room down the longest goddamn hall I have ever seen outside of The Shining. I thought we were going to get lost.

I was anxious to get out of town the next morning. The overpriced hotel room with the tiny TV and no wireless Internet left a bad taste in my mouth. We checked out and looked around. All I saw was offramp sprawl on either side of us. I hear Ellensburg has a beautiful college campus, but I’m less than impressed with the part of town we saw.
We decided to eat in Yakima, just about 40 miles down Interstate 90 from Ellensburg. We drove through hills spotted with scrub brush, past what the map indicated was a military firing zone, and downhill to a plain checked with farmland.
According to its Web site, Yakima is a city of 70,000. They must live underground. All we saw were run-down, single-story residential neighborhoods and a few fast food joints and car dealerships.
And the entire town appeared to have shown up for the Central Washington State Fair. The line of cars waiting to turn left along the choked avenues bordering the fair stretched a good half mile or more. Nearby residents were charging as much for parking space on their lawns—$5— as we would have paid to park near the Space Needle. We did not go to the Yakima Fair.
After we found an Arby’s and had lunch, it was time to get gas. We drove down a street lined with squat buildings selling tractors, used cars and various pawned items, but couldn’t find a single gas station.
“Where the hell do people get gas in this town?” I said.
“Maybe they don’t use gas,” Val said. “Maybe the whole town runs on used cooking oil or something.
“You mean BioDiesel?” I said, looking at the pawn shops and vacant storefronts, remembering the hairy back of a NASCAR hat-wearing man whose thrift-bought Nautica shirt was riding up as he arose from his booth at the Arby’s. “This does not look like a town that cares about BioDiesel.”
Val nodded. “This is a town built on grease,” she said. Then we found the sign leading back to the interstate. We found a gas station, refueled, and on our way out, Val pulled partly into an intersection but didn’t turn left before the light went red. As we sat there waiting for the light to turn again, she pointed to a small black object at the top of the light post.
“Look. It’s one of those traffic cameras,” she said as I wondered whether Big Brother cared if our front wheels were over the crosswalk. I expect to have nightmares about getting recalled to Yakima for traffic court.

After lunch today (and the accompanying feeling of resignation to fast food lunches, both for expediency and economics), we realize perhaps our readership would benefit from a series of restaurant reviews.

The Burger King in Cle Elum was eerie and disappointing. Granted, we ate there half an hour before closing time, but the Swiss & Mushroom Black Angus Burger I ordered was small, skimpy on the mushrooms and lacking crucial pizzazz.
I guess it didn’t matter much, since it felt a little bit like we had stumbled into a restaurant preserved from the apocalypse by its remote forest location. I can’t imagine it would be very easy to enjoy even the choicest BK Black Angus Burger if it was served to you by a hissing albino vampire.
Two stars (one given for a friendly teenage attendant who had to mop the entire floor while we ate).

The Arby’s in Yakima, on the other hand, was surprisingly serene. We ate there at roughly 12:30 p.m., and the place was nearly empty (due, I suspect, to the orgiastic frenzy of the fair). They were offering a “select 5 for $5.95” deal, which I opted for. I got three Arby’s melts, curly fries and a soda. It brought me back to the days when a trip to Chico with my dad would end with us at the Arby’s there, ordering 10 sandwiches during their “5 for $5” deals, dad cringing when the pimply cashier leaned out the window and asked him what kind of sauce he wanted (calling it “horseradish sauce” was generally not specific enough a request to get the “Horsey” sauce we favored).
The restaurants also have some new kind of three-pepper sauce that goes great with curly fries and their roast beef sandwiches. While we ate, one of the cashiers came by with a basket of mints and offered them to us. Truly an extra gesture of classiness.
And classiness can only be a good thing from a restaurant whose idea of menu diversity comes largely from drenching pressed beef slices with nacho cheese.
Val looked at her beef melt sandwich suspiciously and said, “this cheese is a little much, even for me.” She loves nacho cheese.
So, class points for the mints and the bottomless sauce dispensers, trash points for the nacho cheese strategy. All in all, three stars.

***

We arrived in Walla Walla after 4 p.m. and immediately drove to the winery where Val’s friend L. works. We passed scads of sweet onion farms. As Val has told me, the Walla Walla region is the only place where these sweet onions will grow, so it’s become a regional specialty.
But now another specialty is threatening to eclipse the town’s bulby heritage: . There are now more than 70 wineries in the immediate area, up from around 40 just a few years ago. And like the wineries, who offer wine tasting and who see visitors come from as far as Tennessee to try the bottles, Walla Walla itself is beginning to skew upscale.
The downtown area has been nicely renovated. Its historic brick buildings boast an increasing number of boutiques. The chocolate store sells $12 boxes of wine-flavored jelly candies.
But things are much the same as decades past in the fields outside of town. L. lives with her boyfriend and his children in a small house on 10 acres of farmland. They’re starting to raise animals: chickens, pigeons, several cows, four pigs and a horse.

They’re also into stock car racing. Up on ramps in the driveway was a battered Buick of indeterminate age. L. said they got it for free from an acquaintance; they plan to race it in October.

Val took one look and said, “Oh my god, is that moss growing on the rear window sill?”

“This is as clean as I’ve seen it,” L. replied. “You should have seen it when we picked it up.”
She took us around the side of their shop and pointed to the racecar graveyard, a cluster of decaying American coupes from the ’70s and ’80s in the tall yellow grass.

She told us she had been behind the wheel of the latest addition to the wreckage—the car’s rear axle had snapped in the middle of a race.
Later, as the sun set, she took us out to meet the cows and the horse.
“I just love the cows,” L. said. “I never thought I would, but they’re such sweethearts.” She took us out to where the bovines were grazing, her two dogs racing figure-8s around us. True to her description, the cows were friendly, docile animals who sniffed and licked our outstretched hands and then gently nudged our legs with their heads in a bid to get their necks scratched.
V., the teenage daughter of L.’s boyfriend, also came out with us to try to grab the horse. The tall, quiet girl looked a little peculiar in big black galoshes, but as soon as I had dodged my third cow pie, I realized why she wore them.
The horse was finicky and would not be caught. After it bucked past us a few times, V. gave up on the idea.
“Hey, maybe you could show them the trick with the cow,” L. suggested. V. didn’t hesitate. She walked up behind the black and white animal, took five running steps and leaped onto its back. Dik, the most personable of the family’s herd, hardly looked up from his tuft of grass. Then for a moment everyone was silent and still. I was treated to the quixotic silhouette of a lanky, six-foot-tall figure atop a cow, framed by the sunset.
“The only problem is he won’t move,” V. said from her perch.
As we walked back to the house, I asked L. if she had grown up on a farm.
“Oh no,” she said. “I grew up in Sacramento, with big buildings and lots of neighbors. I never thought I’d wind up here.”
She was attending college in Chico when her parents moved to Walla Walla. She met her boyfriend there while visiting them and soon moved up.
“The rural life was mine to choose,” she said, “and I love it.”

***
2 a.m.

We’re blazing down a Washington backroad at 85 mph, chasing after a pickup driven by M., the boyfriend of L., one of Val’s college friends. We’re actually driving L.’s truck, too, for complicated logistical reasons. The little GMC S-15 has plenty of pep, which is good, because we’re chasing a V-8 Silverado with a prison guard on painkillers behind the wheel.
We’re chasing him because he knows the way home and we don’t. It was fine following him on surface streets, since stop signs kept him fairly close, but out here in the boonies, stop signs are scarce. From a previous trip in the daylight, we know these roads are desolate, surrounded by cow pastures and lined with mailboxes so far away from their residences that L. said “people drive four-wheelers to get their mail.”
L.’s boyfriend is on painkillers because he may have broken his elbow. He doesn’t really know. He went to the hospital to get it checked, they gave him a prescription and wrapped it in an ACE bandage, told him to take it easy. He drove from the hospital to meet us out at the bars in Walla Walla, determined not to miss a Friday night with his circle of friends from the correctional facility.
M. managed to pull away from us at the last stop sign, flooring it and racing ahead while I looked both ways before proceeding. Now, as I race to catch up, his taillights disappear. It’s completely dark ahead of the S-15 now, but I know he hasn’t crashed. He’s just gone stealth mode, burning asphalt at 85 with no lights. He knows these roads. I just hope we’re close to their home and no cows are out for a witching-hour constitutional.
We found out M. had hurt himself just a few minutes before we went out to the bars. L. called him and muttered a few shocked words.
M. has had his share of accidents—many broken bones from recreational mishaps. Once, L. explained, he was riding a dirt bike in a field. It flipped and landed on him, breaking his collarbone.
“He was kind of beat up because the bike landed on him and he was afraid he might be bleeding internally, so he decided to take himself to the hospital,” L. said. “But his kids had all gathered at the fence to watch him, so he had to get up and raise his hand to show he was OK. Only he couldn’t raise his hand all the way because of the injury. He told them he had to go to town to get some bread and went to the hospital.”
Another time, L. said, M. had carved her name with a chainsaw in a tree trunk while out cutting firewood. He then cut himself a crude bench in the wood. But something went wrong when he set the chainsaw down, and it cut his knee open. L. likes to joke that the local hospital has a special room for him.
This time, however, the injury was work related. Since L. said M. usually doesn’t like to talk about his experiences at work, we didn’t ask. When we got home, though, he saw my laptop and asked what I was doing. I told him we were working on a blog.
“No more secrets,” he said, and explained to us what happened. More or less. It was some kind of prison scuffle in which he reportedly was defending another guard.
“I bashed the head of a murderer,” M. said, his eyes wide. “He was a convicted murderer. Brought my elbow down on top of his head like this.” He flexed his bicep and dropped his arm in pantomime. “They gave me some medicine and an ACE bandage. I don’t even get any extra pay.”
He sat down on the couch and looked at us, our gear spread out on the coffee table, mattress in the middle of the living room.
“You guys want to write your history, you should stay a week,” he said. “That’s enough time for us to have some history.”

Cheese, snake cam and staying in character

2006-09-19T23:39:00.000-07:00

We just spent the day in Seattle, so naturally I am hopped up on coffee, and what better thing to do with my caffeinated fingers than continue playing catch-up with the blog?

Cheese!
I'll take you back in time now to our visit of the Tillamook Creamery/ Cheese Factory in Tillamook, Ore.--that's right, the very cheese you use to make your quesadillas or place grandly on your BBQ burgers. (None of that cellophane wrapped fake cheese, thankyouverymuch.)

It's a self guided tour with an intro video that shows how the multiple dairy farmers (over 50!) in Tillamook County must wear several hats as a dairy farmer (mechanic, veterinarian and businessman!). Apparently when people first started moving to Tillamook, they realized their cows' milk started getting sweeter. Why this is, I don't know. The video never explained that. My guess is it had something to do with the weather. Anyways, sweeter milk equaled better cheese and Tillamook County began to dominate all the cheese-tasting contests in the area.

A replica of the Morning Star with Jeremy

And with a good product comes commerce, and the ship Morning Star was born to transport the cheese throughout the northwest, because trucking was too expensive and hazardous for the cheese.

Sadly, the tour wasn't nearly as fun as I had hoped. There were no viewings of milk being poured into vats mixed with the bacteria or whatever it is to make milk curd, and I couldn't see the curds get taken out of the whey and get pressed into loaves before being set on a refrigerated shelf to age like in the video. Instead, we got to see cheese getting sliced and packaged--the scraps of which, I suspect, were used for the free taste-testing line.

We were fortunate enough to be walking next to a group who appeared to be friends of one of the workers there, who evidently gave them a tour and explanations on why the pepper jack cheese wasn't processed by hand (the workers got itchy eyes) and why we couldn't see the cheese get sliced into sandwich-size slabs separated by wax paper or shredded (that's all done in California and Ohio).

To top it all off, we ate some Tillamook ice cream (that's right, they make great ice cream too) and drove back to Di's place in Vancouver, literally chasing rainbows due to the rain and sunshine.

Snakes on a Plane, Snakes on a Train, Snakes going Insane!
We finally did it. We watched the godawful movie Snakes on a Plane starring Samuel L. Jackson and the actress who played Carol Hathaway on E.R.
But we did it in style.
We went to the Baghadad theater in Portland which is a prime example of the restoration efforts of McMenamins, a brewery that decided to actually help out its community by turning old buildings into viable contributors of local commerce while also preserving the aesthetic and history of the buildings.

The secret of restoring a movie theater:
Step 1: Show second-round movies for cheap. The ones that other theaters dropped a few weeks ago in favor of a new money maker.
Step 2: Make the inside of the theater comfy by adding tables so people can eat their movie theater food without having to worry about balancing everything on their knees.
Step3: Sell pizza.
Step 4: Sell beer.

I only wish the El Rey in Chico, Calif. had done something like this to keep it from closing. Office space does not do the theater justice.

Anyways the cheers, groans and moans from theatergoers were magnified by the alcohol, and Snakes on a Plane was fantastic for the sheer spectacle of over-the-top cheesiness. Among my favorite scenes were the snake cam shots, which looked like night-vision goggles seen through the eyes of a cat on LSD. Craptacular. And in case you were wondering, we have no pictures of the theater because we were trying to blend in with the hipsters of Portland.

Next up: I'll get to Washington, I swear!

Moving out of a comfort zone.

2006-09-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

Not caught up, but still trying.
It's been almost a week since leaving the county that has been my home for seven years, and it's slowly feeling less like a vacation and more of journey.
Sorry about the delay on blogs from the Farewell Tour, but it's been a bit chaotic and sleep deprived time for us, so I'll catch you up on recent musings and events for now.

Eureka, California
We spent the first night at my friend 'Sunshine's' house in Eureka with her fiance and his son. It took several days for me to fully realize that my good friend was essentially a parental figure.
"Wow. You're a Mommy," I said as she grasped the toddler around her neck.
"I know. I'm so sober," she said.
We had lunch at the Lost Coast Brewery, which was covered with kitschy decorations, the most grotesque being a stuffed black widow approximately the size of an eight-legged Great Dane. The glorified furry pinata was rigged to the door, lowering itself ominously over unsuspecting patrons entering the dining room. Strangely enough, the rope wasn't long enough to scare the customers. Instead it just kept creeping out our table, which was a few feet away from the entrance. The spider's languid bobbing motion triggered the primal urge in me to run away from dark, furry objects.
And of course, the toddler wasn't even fazed by the motion.

Life on the northern coast of California seems extremely relaxing. Part of it might be the high unemployment rate. (As we've recently learned, it's easy to be lazy when you don't have to get up for work in the morning.) According to Sunshine and her fiance, Eureka is in one of those cycles where the cost of living is so low that it attracts the unemployed or unemployable. However there still seems to be room for strippers, since there are only two at the club downtown, and according to our hosts, they took their vacations at the same time. And think about it: what's a strip club without the strippers? Just a club with cheap juice, dim lighting and a bunch of disappointed men.

I could see why Eureka appealed to my formerly Chicoan friends; everything was in walking distance, the people were extremely nice and the downtown had a lot of character. Instead of headache-inducing fluorescent lights lining the streets, glowing lamps gave the streets both a classic and modern feel.

And most importantly, I didn't feel like I was being dominated by corporate America, unlike some areas like Tulare, CA, which gave me the synthetic creeps--a town that didn't understand the concept of a restaurant that doesn't have a national headquarters.

Ashland & Medford, Oregon
I had mixed feelings about crossing the line from California into Oregon. I was excited that we had finally crossed a state line, but I also felt like that we were entering enemy territory.

The first hint I had of a rivalry of sorts between California and Oregon, came from my high school history teacher who indelicately said "California should just bowl over Oregon and make it a giant suburb for California." This was a teacher. No wonder Oregonians hate us.

Anyways, we decided to catch a play at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, but we decided to try to beat the system and got a motel room in Medford, where the economy wasn't as strong the the room rates were cheaper.

The last time I had been to the Shakespeare Festival was in middle school, and my most distinct memory of that trip was daring John the Canadian to bang his head as hard as he could against the fiberglass "rock" wall of the outdoor theater. I swear the actors did a double take when John actually smashed his noggin into the wall, causing a weird rippling vibration effect to the surrounding seats.

We were much calmer this trip and watched a play called "Intimate Apparel," which, appropriately enough, involved a woman trying to make it in New York City. I'll refrain from giving a review of the play since this is a blog and not a freaking review site, but I will say I enjoyed myself and yes, it did involve lingerie.

I was nervous at first about going to the theater in jeans (my travel jeans, no less). But everyone else was casual. Except of course for the middle school children dressed in their plaid and khaki uniforms. I wondered if any of them would be willing to smash their head in a theater on a dare.

Let the gas game begin!
On our way back to Medford, we stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank and came across our first anxiety-ridden task: Do we tip the gas attendant for filling the tank up? Something we'd be willing to do ourselves if the law allowed.

After two minutes of standing around outside the car waiting for someone from the seemingly abondoned but unlocked gas station to appear, a shaggy-haired gas attendant wearing shorts and a T-shirt came out to dutifully fill the tank.

"So are you heading to California?" he asked.
"Just left there actually," Jeremy said. "We're heading to New York and visiting some friends along the way."

It was an explanation that has gotten so well oiled in my mind, I feel like it'll slip out of my mouth at the mere probing of how my day was going.

"So why is there a law against people pumping their own gas here?" I asked.
"I think it's some law to keep jobs out there for the people," Shaggy Hair Guy said. He also gave a brief explanation that even though there is no sales tax, the citizens of Oregon get screwed over with a hefty property tax. I asked how long the law had been in effect and the shaggy hair guy said it was around as long as he remembered.

Shaggy hair guy had just gotten back to Oregon after spending six months in Hawaii. Before that he spent a few years by Lake Almanor in California. I was getting curious about this guy's life and why he returned to the land of high property taxes when the tank finally topped off and Jeremy and I stood there in an awkward dance of "To tip or not to tip." In the end, Jeremy gave him a handful of change, mostly silver from what I could see, and we were back on our way to the cheap motel room.

The next day we had to stop for gas en route to Portland. This time there was an organized system with one gas attendant swiping cards and filling up the tanks for four stations each. Twelve stations with six attendants total. It was almost hypnotic how our gas station attendant, a portly woman in her 40s, could gracefully weave her way through the tubes to fill the thirsty vehicles. Jeremy tipped her a dollar and she seemed surprised but happy with the tip.

I had to wonder if being a gas station attendant was a career or an in-between job. Was it the equivalent of working at Wal-Mart or being a small-time methamphetamine dealer in other states? An undesirable, but safe bet for work?

It wasn't until we met up with my friend "Di" and some of her friends in Portland that we were told they don't usually tip the gas station attendants.
"Well I guess those two were the lucky ones," Jeremy said.

Living across state lines and beating the system.
Even though Di technically lived in Washington, in the town of Vancouver, the closest metropolitan city was across state lines in Portland.
"I can do my shopping in Portland with no sales tax and live in Vancouver for the low property tax rate and cheap rent," Di says.

Even though the commute was less than 30 minutes, Di said she still had the urge to move to Portland because there wasn't as much to do at night in Vancouver.

Walking around the Hawthorne area of Portland, something Di had said earlier rang loud in my head. She had mentioned a friend saying that the girls in Chico all look the same. At first I dismissed this comment as one that came from a man who only saw pretty blondes in short skirts because those were the only ones that registered on his radar, but walking around Portland I began to see what he meant.
There were was an Asian girl in slouchy boots and prairie skirt, a striking brunette wearing leggings under short gym shorts and a laid-back African American girl wearing loose jeans with her hair pulled back in a puff.
There wasn't the usual California sheen of glittery makeup and shiny lip gloss, and there were no sets of best friends wearing the same outfit in different colors with similar haircuts. I must admit, it was a nice change.

Next Edition: "Snakes on a Plane" for cheap, the proliferation of Sex Shops and a historical reenactment.

A little input, please

2006-09-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

We're in Port Orchard now, just south of Seattle. We've been driving and photographing for the last week (and putting off updating the blog). I've got some pictures, but not nearly enough. Here's a giant mechanical Paul Bunyan located at the Trees of Mystery on Highway 101 just south of the Oregon border.

Val whipped Beaker into the parking lot when she spotted the giant animatronic display, jumped out of the car with the camera. Then it started talking to people at its feet.

"Don't be afraid, little girl," it said to one cowering tot. Fifty feet away, Val and I were scared and drove away.

With such a huge world out there, I realize we need some direction, so I turn to you, dear readers. What should we photograph? Comment on this blog entry and tell us some of the roadside things you might want to see. Tell us if there's anything in the northern states between Washington and New York we should visit.

Hunting chupacabra in the high desert

2006-09-06T17:29:00.000-07:00

August 17:

We’re standing on an empty road in the hills outside Tehachapi. It’s after midnight and the only lights come from the odd little A-frame in the ranch compound below us and the weird neon blue strobes coming from the forests of gargantuan wind turbines in the distance. The monolithic windmills closer to the compound have no strobe beacons. Their silhouettes tower over Heaven Ranch, blades crying eerily through the night.

We’re about to cross the road and climb a hill toward what our companions are calling an old abandoned slaughterhouse, but we’ve paused because the daughter of Rowdy Roddy Piper is getting second thoughts about leaving the relative safety of the ranch.

I find this a little strange, since she has been vocal about her outdoorsy life in Oregon, but given the reason she’s here at this small compound in the high desert, it makes sense that everyone is a little on edge.

They’re filming a horror movie. Tonight we’re hunting el chupacabra.

Val’s friend is making jokes that since the two of us are the most recent arrivals, we haven’t bonded with the “audience” yet and will be the first two disemboweled by the beast. The Piper’s daughter, a healthy-looking blonde girl of about 20, is remembering all the ghost stories the crew has been telling—about the man who committed suicide in the mobile home where Val and I will sleep tonight, about the little girl who long ago drowned in the gully below the compound when a flash flood tore through the hills and half-buried the graveyard of stolen, stripped cars; how the director once saw her and ordered her to help carry out some equipment, thinking she was his own young daughter.

Her companion, a young man with an enigmatic accent and a movie role, is trying to exploit this as we stumble over a barb-wire fence and weave carefully around the larger tufts of scrub where we’re convinced nests of rattlesnakes slumber.

Val’s other friend, J., mentions mountain lions, and all of a sudden giant cats are dueling it out with venomous snakes in my brain for terror primacy. I shine my flashlight carefully in front of Val’s feet, sure that at any moment I will see a shape that won’t register in my mind as a paw or a slithering tail until after everyone else has started screaming.

Cows graze on these hills, but we see none of them, only dried cow pies. This only increases my puma suspicions. Suddenly Val’s friend lets out a piercing scream and we hear feet shuffling in the loose dirt ahead. The events of the evening suddenly take on a fatal tone as I wonder who should have been leading the group, if we should have been out here with more flashlights, if I should have evaluated the circumstances before we left and been a wet blanket.

Then we hear Val’s friend cursing J. out for scaring her. We press on up the hill, climb over another fence and find a decrepit metal Quonset hut. We peer into it, “Blair Witch” style, to find there’s nothing there—no furniture, no floor, no graffiti. It’s truly empty. Next to the hut we find two decaying cattle trailers. They’re round-roofed wooden things, and they look like the abandoned wagons from a down-on-its-luck carnival.

Compelling scenery for a horror movie, but thorough investigation reveals no traces of any kind of human—or vampiric—occupation. This is the high desert.

***

Val and I arrived at the ranch a few hours earlier after driving from Butte County. The opening leg of our West Coast farewell tour would take us to San Diego, but Val’s best friend, working 16-hour days on the set in Tehachapi, told her she would have a few days off. We diverted there to visit her, not sure if we would stay at the set or the nearest hotel, not sure how near the nearest hotel would be.

I had been chugging caffeinated soda since we left Paradise at 2 p.m. By the time we got to Bakersfield and had dinner, I had switched to the backup: an 11-ounce can of Starbucks iced coffee we picked up in Sacramento. I was jittery and alienated. I was watching things happen through a tunnel. I no longer had to blink.

This was my first real road-trip experience as a licensed driver. My family had driven to San Luis Obispo occasionally when I was a child, but staring vacantly out a passenger window is a far cry from avoiding dually pickups with horse trailers and desperately trying to navigate a landscape seemingly forsaken by helpful road signs.

We had been driving for five or six hours before we stopped to refuel at a settlement that seemed to be nothing more than gas stations. Walking around the car and staring at the outline of the sun obscured by the pervasive haze, I already felt like I was a different person in a different land. Nobody lived here. None of the people milling into the AM-PM/Jack In The Box did, either. This is the anonymity of being elsewhere bound. Though there’s not a lot of hostility or malice in these situations, I doubt it’s because everybody’s really that benign. It’s likely a matter of conserving energy: getting to the destination is the priority, and after six hours in the car, you can’t spare much for hassling some other guy over a spot in the line to buy gasoline and Slim Jims. The fact that everybody on I-5 seems to drive interchangeable minivans and Chevy Tahoes doesn’t help that faceless feeling.

We got done with dinner knowing we were close, not knowing we would have to wind our way up a stupefyingly steep Highway 58 before we got to Tehachapi. I left the restaurant feeling a little like a victim of Convenience Store America for the day’s intake of calories and fat. Fearing obesity (and yes, being a stereotypical brand-obsessed, franchise-hound American), I am reluctant to live on the standard roadside diet of fast food and Cokes, but without a careful strategy (or the patience and focus to search out a supermarket after a hard day’s drive), this is the cuisine available. I like fast food enough to know it’s going to be a fight to keep from adopting these eating habits long term.

So up Highway 58 in the early darkness, flat at first, but then climbing and winding, the pink-orange glow of Bakersfield disappearing among the hills. We were surrounded by 18-wheelers gasping up the grade. I don’t know why such a grueling route is so traveled by cargo trucks, but they far outnumber the cars when the sun goes down. They’re in both lanes, some with hazard lights flashing, some flooring it, grinding those gears to get past the slower rigs.

Beaker has a four-speed automatic transmission. To climb hills, I try to keep the speed and the RPMs up to prevent it from downshifting. I don’t like the high drone of third gear, but this was a nightmare of a climb, up from the valley to 3,000 feet. Between the grade and the constant obstacle of trucks passing trucks at 30 mph, we took it in third.

Then, finally, the small town of Tehachapi. We passed through it and into the windmill hills, off to a road where Heaven Ranch is the first sign of civilization. Val’s friend got permission for us to sleep at the compound, so we drove through the tall wrought-iron arch and parked in the dirt, amid a smattering of mobile homes, travel trailers, trucks, and the well-landscaped A-frame.

She showed us our sleeping accommodations, a bedroom inside a mobile home on the outskirts of the compound. She shrieked when she opened the door and a mouse waddled away from the wastebasket in the living room. The dead man’s cat would probably take care of it, but she’s allergic to cats and keeps it outside.

Later, after meeting filmmaking mastermind David Heavener, hearing him sing a bluesy song about necrophilia, and then the chupacabra hunt, we bedded down and I started to write:

Three mattresses, all stolen from the same motel, no box springs, stacked together, are a bed. The trailer park princess and the pea.

We’re lying on a queen-size air mattress on the floor of a mobile home. It’s 3 a.m.—perfect time to be awake on the floor of a mobile.

The mobile is part of a small complex near Tehachapi, surrounded by the giant three-blade wind turbines that look friendly by day and ghostly by night. In this mouse-infested house—and several other trailers and homes—sleeps an entire film crew.

The complex is on a hillside speckled with scrub and debris. The buildings are similarly cluttered—old furniture, broken TVs, stairs to nowhere, stolen road signs. These things seem equally haphazard and yet they all seem like they could appear in the string of low-budget films that spew from the home-brew studio and its feverishly driven proprietor.

David lives in the A-frame house on the property.

A seemingly ageless, “been there” kind of guy, he writes, directs, stars in, scores and produces his films. He is also a martial arts expert and a Christian music recording artist.

Like the man himself, the house extends far past its humble exterior. As his films and ambitions have dictated, David has built on to the house, creating an M.C. Escher-esque labyrinth of white doors, arbitrarily shaped rooms and staircases to nowhere. A studio exists adjacent to this house, festooned with David’s movie posters and filled with used set pieces. Outside he has built a pond from an underground spring, presumably to expand his shooting locations.

His films are made in six weeks and then distributed by a major video store chain. “Straight to video,” a term synonymous in some circles with “factory second” or “thrift store,” is in this case the deliberate objective. Make a film for $10,000. Sell it to the video stores for between $50,000 and $250,000. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But it can be hard to repeatedly churn out movies on the cheap. Most actors crave meaty roles in tightly written scripts. And they want to be paid. Most crew members hate their jobs because they’re really paying their dues on the road to a director’s chair. And they want to be paid.

The more you develop your crew, the more compensation they expect. They expecxt to work in higher quality productions, too.

David manages to keep his costs down in several ways. First, he owns his own studio. Second, he doesn’t’ have to pay anyone for screenplays—he does it himself. Third, his actors perform double duty behind the camera as assistant directors, script readers and craft services.

Fourth and most importantly, he doesn’t pay them for either role.

David has harnessed the informational power of the Internet. Because of this, he gets his cast for free.

Experience has always been a hot commodity in moviemaking, a business in which untold numbers of projects go unfinished because they run out of funds or their creative leaders part ways or their creators just lose interest. Having a verifiable film credit to your name is like a merit badge, a permanent association with a project which, even if it tanked, actually saw the light of day. A film credit is an endorsement. While this has always been so, verifying it was much more difficult before the Internet. The Internet Movie Databas e stores information on nearly every movie ever made (and officially distributed). Even straight-to-video movies show up there. David should know. He’s got more than 25 entries.

While the Internet is a lure to fresh talent, David also finds it a useful medium for revenue. He advertises for crew on craigslist.org, but he also gets the chance to select potential cast members when people sign up for his $75 acting seminars (“Wrote, directed and starred in over 25 films!”), held in his private studio.

Apart from the cast, everything gets recycled—set pieces, wardrobe, locations—with no room for perfectionism. David has his house rebuilt for each shoot. Amateur actors perform their best while trying to keep the shambolic production afloat, compromises piled atop compromises like so many mattresses, until there’s 100 minutes of movie. But it gets done.

Somebody must rent these films. The distribution contracts don’t pay David for units rented, of course, but people must rent the movies for the stores to keep paying him for his product. And don’t tell me it’s a bunch of irony-minded twentysomethings looking to play “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” I don’t believe that’s the target audience.

When they reach the shelves, some shell-shocked consumer must reach out a numb hand and grab the drab jewel case. The thing is, we exist in a branded world. Brands define our culture. We feel more comfortable with name-brand soda, name-brand cereal, even the name-brand electronics that play our entertainment.

And certainly our celebrities are brands, with their own marketing schemes and demographic appeal. So who is left anywhere who would earnestly consume these generic products? For the same price as a recognizable brand, who would take this off the shelf?

Here we go

2006-08-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

We were reporters at the Paradise Post, a small newspaper in Paradise, California. We were both ready for something different, something larger. We decided to move to New York, a publishing hub.

Because I wanted to continue writing for newspapers, I had to have a car. Hence the transcontinental road trip.

It started a little late. We've already finished the first leg of our farewell tour, the precursor to the heinous 3,000-mile trek that will take us from California to New York. We have pictures, and we have stories. They'll be up soon. As soon as I can stop writing placeholder text like this and get down to business.

Next comes the Bay Area, then Washington. Stay tuned.