Oregon Trail

What happened to Salt Lake? And... Idaho... And... the wasteland.

ALL TO COME!

BUT FIRST!! MY LOST DESERT PICTURES HAVE RETURNED TO MY PHONE:

Information on cisco: http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ut/cisco.html

where i camped out:



cliffs on the way





this is my favorite picture of the desert



This is great... the crack in my wind shield matches the weirdness of the landscape, and the camera phone image quality ads the finishing touches.



The river otter was fast so his picture was not to be taken, but I have photographic evidence of river otter tracks:



This is someone else's up-close picture of the north american river otter



--------------------------



I guess this part of the trip was the least exotic one... so much of the way here looks familiar to many of you, so instead of taking my own pictures I just went to images.google.com for other people's pictures of the stuff I saw.

This is the Travel America center where I started out to buy some supplies:



I had to leave Decker behind as he was simply consuming too many of our dwindling resources. I felt bad about it, but out here in the deserts and the fields choices like that are unavoidable.



You might think me a bad person for doing it... but everyone else got here fine.

South pass was awesome, very senic.



Camping out can be pretty senic. Here's my camp from two days ago:



Some camp sites were less glamourous, but you take what you can get. This is just after getting rid, I mean, out of Idaho, in the morning.



So whatever happened to Salt Lake?

Well, getting there was ok, despite the capitalist propaganda and meth. But I was at Area 51, the goth industrial bar or whatever, when suddenly, it hit me: this place is kinda fucked up. It wasn't just the "Your country is dying from political correctness," billboards on the way in. Sometimes, it's what's unsaid that sends the strongest message. This was found chicken scratched on the back of a flyer for "filter therapy/deviant www.myspace.com/deviantnoises " in my left inner coat pocket:

Notes from SLC. Thursday.
-Net cafe and book. Drove around trying to find club, but it was damn confusing given the way these ppl'r bent on naming the streets around here. Maybe logic gets a little fucked up generally when you're in the desert this long; because it's a big desert. This bar has got like 5 or 6 different areas to be at and only some of them have alcohol bars and you can't go from 1 area to the other. I feel like... this is weird. Also... drove around a lot. Final parking place 1 block further away than the one I left from. Are bar people friendly here as they are in Denver? Hard to tell cause they are so damned spread out from one another.

(this place was all like, tables to sit at, not a long bar to sit next to other people at)

They play generic VNV here, like everywhere... where to spend halloween? Probably at a rest area in Idaho. At this point, something about the bars... these clubs, drinking getting drunk enough to dance, and waiting for them to fill up, is getting old. This place is a barn, few bar stools, but many tables, make things less socialable. Here in SL, you can't have your drink with you on the dance floor. What the heck is up with that?

How do you dance with out a beer or mixed drink in your hand?


Also, everyone dancing is mad underage... What's up with that? At least they played Michael Jackson... male heavy and Jailbait skewed. What if I straight dragged otta here, ate the stacker 3's, and did halloween in Portland? Could it be worse? I got stacker three's!

Did I need another omen, or was my being prompted to write "At least they played Michael Jackson" enough? Well, ok, how about this: you know how lisence plates are three letters and three numbers? Well, the only lisence plates I have ever seen where the numbers have been 666 or the letters have been "WAR" were in Salt lake city. Also, I never before saw a sign anywhere that said "support your local police". Where I've been that people make the most sense the police, despite the occassional "good guy" cop like Mad Max and the guy with the dog from "Chips", are always to be distrusted, and insofar as possible, avoided.

The above quoted lines and experiances do I think speak for themsleves. Indeed, it was incredibly impressionistic of me, to extrapelate so much judgement of an entire city- indeed the capital of a state as well as only metropolis of its size for hundreds of miles around. But this may have been precisely what was needed.... Halloween weekend is this weekend and this is the first time in years I haven't had to work during it... so I better make it count. I simply knew at that very instant that I either had to leave, or else I'd keep drinking Hennesy, get to drunk to drive, put on some clown happy face makeup and dance with these underage kids, and wind up spending the whole damn weekend in that one decidedly un-cool metropolis.

So I ate this stuff



which of course does horrible things to your body, I recall from reading on the internet, after my waiter friends fed me three in one day during an evening shift. I almost passed out, was talking at 90 mph, went through gallons of iced tea, and got more compliments on my waiter skills than I've ever had before in my life. If three can do all that, then one at least outta get me through Idaho.

To the credit of stacker three's, I did actually start to midly hallucinate during the last 65 miles to the rest area on the border, seeing these funny little purple, yellow trails around all that was lit and glowy. Also, occassionally people who did not exist would jump out of the shoulder and into the lane I was driving in. However, at the same time, I hadn't slept in many many hours, and did drive from central utah to oregon in like 18 hours, so it may have just been sleep deprivation after all.

I know Idaho is a state, and like all of them, worth seeing and absorbing... at the same time though, I've also heard a bit about it, and some from people who have lived there, none of which was too good... if the United States has anything like the concept of "vast, endless steppes", it's probably gonna be found in Idaho... no where else have I ever been where there is so absoulte zero quanitiy of development or habitation in between cities, scattered about the place. However, I did absorb enough of the state to recall these observations:

-In Boisie there is a bird of prey museum that looks pretty cool
-While it is a distinctly "AMERICAN" practice to shoot guns through interstate street signs, it is is IDAHO where I've seen the largest caliber bullet holes through any one sign.
-They have signs about snow chains and not stopping in the middle of the interstate if there is a dust storm in Idaho.

So I did it straight through in one night with no problems, other than that it was a little cold, and wound up in east Oregon.

When I heard that east Oregon was a desert, I guess I assumed it would be like utah. But it was an entirely different kind of desert... weird, empty hills, just, nothingness, and grass and sagebrush. The photos (these are mine from here on out) speak for themselves:









However, as wastelands go, this probably did have the single most incredibly awesome wasteland-oriented location I have ever visited or driven past:



Old crumbling concrete plant looking stuff, but crumbled to the point of medieval looking ruins, particularly the surrounding smaller buildings... AND, blending in perfectly, exactly the same tint of desaturated, sun-blanched, yellow, as the surrounding hills.

That was near the city of Lime, Oregon. Someone really needs to shoot a film there or something.

Stopped in Baker City for gas and to do laundry. This is weird, full service only at gas stations in Oregon... umm.. okay. I also spent $0.75 to read a newspaper and "catch up" on the "important facts" of the "world" I have been missing. These included:

-A bookstore owner in Houston paid $100,000 for a lock of Che Gueverra's hair, because "some of his writings are still quite relevant".

-An old couple, one of whom was 71, committed suicide, taking their four dogs with them, by flooding the house with carbon monoxide from their car which was turned on in the garage. They had just experienced their third bankruptcy, and their home had just been foreclosed on them.

-Bush is preparing to veto another law that would give some health care to poor children.

Does that make you a cynical son of a bitch? Does that make you wonder why I'm reading "Existentialism vs Marxism" instead of "Existentialism"? Well, how about this? Two things occurred in a parking lot:

-A cute chihuahua who is very small was barking and scratching at the glass window of a beige, wasteland painted pickup truck.

-In the check out aisle of the Baker City Safeway at approximately 2:54 pm on Friday, October 26th, and old man returned to a cashier a red purse he had found in the parking lot, where a lady customer had evidently dropped it.

How about that? I guess you may not know for sure which event helped the most to restore my faith in humanity, despite the headlines.... but that is your problem, and not mine.

The road continues to a tall hill overlooking the valley.



The hills, nude but for the grass, roll down for thousands of feet like the gentle curves of fingers lying flat upon a bed.





I still say that windows vista GENERALLY sucks. However, it did let me do this:



That's right, damnit. I'm Gary Numan's tears for fears



The sunset happened. I stopped at the rest area to cook pita pizzas. Before and after that these shots were taken:








Hey umm, you wanna know what else is cool about Oregon?



Perhaps you need a close-up:



Check the brightness on your monitor. That's forty goddamned ounces of PBR! Woohooo!

So then what happened? A totally ludicrous, completely unenforced, "65 mph" speed limit on I-84 along the columbia river.. this ment a practical speed limit of 85... however, not even this could get me into portland in time. For you see, as scientific as I have things worked out, it does take TIME and ENERGY to naviage through a strange downtown, change into fashionable clothes, meet people, and find the bar and all, plus it costs money. So.... i stopped 20 miles outside in troutdale where the city is on a steep hill that almost stalled out the subaru. crazy. Anyways, I found a dark side street and slept.

Woke up the next day for hot water to do some of this freeze dried chicken with rice at the travel america. I tell you I am getting damned tired of freeze dried chicken with rice. Even the mexican flavor with pinto beans is starting to let me down; and don't even talk to me about BBQ or Teriyaki. This close to a major city though I wasn't sure where I could really go to cook something real.

Last thing? I met a friendly, talkative ex-alcoholic truck driver guy who questioned me about my existance and offered me advice. This included:

-Do it now while you're young (this was seconded by another truck driver)
-Get a 21st century skill as well as an 18th century skill
-You need rocks under your feet
-Don't half step. You gotta do it all the way.
-Our society is based on the glorificaton of the 7 deadly sins. Pride is what people w/ no love come up with. Therefore; hustlers/politicans, pornography is the net's biggets money maker, and titty-bars.

It was like BADITUDE isself turned into a truck driver and walked into that washroom to brush its teeth and tell me just that. Maybe this guy was one of the disembodied spirits I've been told to listen out for; but I'm pretty sure he was real.

Portland has yet to be experianced, but I got a good omen comming into here, so we'll find out.

In the Land of Zion

Yo this is the promised land.

I can't even begin to describe the trip here. You gotta take it yourself. IN A BIZARRE TWIST OF DESERT FATE all my best photos, which were taken during the 20th hours I spent in the Colorado river canyon near the half-ghost town of Cisco where the rocks are red, there are 1000 ft cliffs, and mesas everywhere; yes, where all my BEST photos of the whole god damned trip were taken; NONE of these made it from my phone to my email. They just got fucking ate in mid air by flying desert evil. Or something!

West on I-70 is up up up and sunny and nice; then you emerge out of the tunnel into a completely different world of clouds and fog where you are in the clouds... pass frisco, vale, avon, a few ski towns. These are among the highest points of the rockies. However, unlike Utah, which I'll get to next, because your starting elevation is so high, it makes the climbs less dramatic because though you may have climed a "fourteener", you may have started from your car parked at a trailhead at 10,000 or 11,000 feet. So hah!
Anyways, it looked like this here:



this was all taken on a 'sunny' day!







I like this shot the best





The alpineness came down and gave way to the western desert with mesas and beautiful, ancient, crumbling hills, as well as that srcrubby tree stuff from the movies.







I love these dramatic anclines and synclines



these rocks are awesome



You enter the canyon carved out by the colorado river








Past the town of rifle where I made a pita pizza lunch in the park. They have a giant mesa with cliffs.





Notice anything weird about the above picture? How about the fence? You can be in the MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE in the United States and off any interstate or highway there is always this fence. What the hell? Who put that there? It sucks and makes it hard to just pull over and check stuff out. If that is the point it is pretty lame.

Rifle also had this kind of stuff which is awesome. You expect aliens or b movie actors or scientists or body snatchers or something to come out at you here.






Besides the mountains and deserts, utah has a lot of empty randomness like this"



and trains



Senic view, huh? this is a half hour or so south of salt lake:



my hair is growing... i get rocker hair.... this is how i look when i drive in the desert, listening to mentallo and the fixer ,which is also from the desert



There are reflections that were had... more to be had... and i need a place better suited in the future to relate them to you at. This is not the place because the store closes soon and they want me to leave I think. But first let me tell you this. I am on the right track. God has a way of giving me these signs to let me know. The fact that he does not exist does not prevent God from doing this; any more than the fact that God Module's on-stage synthesizer not being turned on does not prevent them from pretending to play it. You can do such things when you are a God and/or signed to Metropolis Records.

I started to learn this in the spring, when I'd randomly drive in a direction on the weekends. I honed it in in Europe, and now it works like a charm, everywhere.

HOW TO GET BY IN A CITY YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO AND KNOW NO ONE:

1) Get to the city. Drive to where things are tall.
2) Go around in circles, if you see anything called main street, go there.
3) Walk around looking for weird punk rock looking guys or girls. Ask them where to go to hang out.
4) Find the internet cafe/ bookstore. It is always located in this part of town. Find directions for that club. Also, look for books.
5) Go to the club and meet someone. If all goes well you get a couch to sleep on. Otherwise at least you have fun talking to folks and taking in the local flair.

Oh wait, you want insurance? Well, just post a craigslist personals add a few days before you get to town. Then you get someone's number and you have a tour guide/potenital place to stay all for FREE and you know about it ahead of time.

So how did God/ Metropolis tell me this is the right track?

1) Women are beautiful here and people are friendly
2) I looked for hours on all the shelves of the book store. Only two books appeared worth buying, which I did, and moreover than the fact they are worth buying, they are completely and totally NECESSARY for me to possess and understand AT THIS VERY MOMENT!

Their titles are:
"Existentialism vs Marxism"

(Woah!)

and

"A PLACE TO SLEEP: SHE GAVE HERSELF WITH ABANDON"

which is a pulp novel about a girl who travels around and to stay somewhere she just hooks up with people. Sound familiar?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM GETTING GOOD VIBY COSMIC SIGNALS DURING EXISTENCE.

I forget anything? Yes, there are billboards here, there was a river otter, and a HOT GIRL asked a guy out. So I don't have to re-tell you here's how i just typed it to someone else. Check it out, italics make words seem more valuable:



God damn I've seen some good things. I'm in the land of zion man, where the mormons think god sent them to live. I'm in salt lake and it's beautiful. I'm at the place with free wifi and it is nuts. I saw the hottest woman ever ask this bookstore guy out in the cutest flirtiest way I've ever seen. About 40 feet from where I parked I saw a punk rock looking guy who told me where to go to hang out. Another 40 feet was the bookstore cafe where i can charge batteries for phone and computer. AND I saw the two MOST important books in the world for me to read write now: A serious one called "Existentialism vs Marxism", and a pulp novel about a women who just travels around and fucks people in exchange for a place to sleep. Damn this is awesome.

Man the billboards here were trippy. Billboards advertising capitalism, seriously... this billboard said "I am the Free Capitalist" and had a link to a website i won't share cause then the billboard would win. Others were against meth and real cheesy, then you had of course ones about consultations for migraines and lazer hair removal, as well as gun shows and such.... it is funny too cause this should be this great religious mecca of a city.... the whole way to it was beautiful, but once you got here the smog was so horrid you couldn't see across the valley wild.

I have beautiful photos I have yet to unload. But this is a good thing: I awoke two days ago in the canyon of the Colorado river where all the rocks are red like mars though its not mars, and there are steep, thousand foot, ancient crumbling mesas, and a RIVER OTTER is playing in the river and he caught a fish and ate it!!!! HOW GOOD IS THAT? THAT IS FUCKING GOOD-FANTASTIC!

Here's a more detailed description also written elsewhere by a witness (myself) of the asking out incident:

Just now man.... the hottest woman I've ever seen asked out the hip 'i work at a book store guy' and she was all like, "what do you think of coffeeeee,?", "Would you like to have coffee sometime?", "I heard you play an instrument. I've from out of town but I play guitar." Dude, it was THE most amazing fucking thing so far. Totally beautiful. Get the fuck out of richmond. Fuck the whole east coast. God damnit they have LIFE out here!


Yeah man, listen to that last part. There's adventures AND cosmo-intuitive significance to be appreciated out here.

MORE
TO
COME.

Very Little is Romantic About Sleeping on Wet Pavement

So fricking much has happened... I've written so much and done so much... how do I begin to share it with you? A longer, or several much longer, works than blogs are starting to develop out of this trip. What you see here are tidbits and highlights.

We'll begin with what slipped through the cracks last time.

This is Barlow eating a Po Boy


This is another view of the tall mountains.



Driving 285 from New Mexico to Salida was awesome.... because of so much of this:



Empty, semi-functional, agro-industrial grain elevator looking stuff in the desert.

For those of you who wondered what the hell is meant by a "laughing fish", here's two pictures of them:





Sometimes I do miss these guys



That's waiter poker with sugar packet chips on a slow day in DC for you. But at the same time.... I'm not sure if I can ever go back to that.

When you live in a hole it is all you know. You don't know if it's a nice hole or not, because you know nothing else. So you decide its nice. And you go on living. Even if you are being abused.

Now I know there is a lot more.

I know people in Denver are friendly in the most non-superficial, genuinely interested sort of way. When the Swedish sailor told me that, "With good music and a drink in your hand you'll be welcome everywhere," I wasn't sure if he was right or not. Well, in Denver he's right. With the car it's great cause you can go wherever. You can meet people and talk to them and they will talk to you and maybe offer you a couch to sleep on. If not it doesn't matter though cause you can sleep in a car and I've worked that out to be very comfortable.

The whole point about living in/out of a car is that you absolutely must keep everything very well compartmentalized. That makes it easy to move stuff around so in 2 minutes you go from having everything well packed and stowed so stuff doesn't move around too much when you drive on a rough road; to having a mattress and blankets and a nice place to sleep for yourself. You need to be able to do this quick and not be sketchy about it because at some places living in a car is illegal, or at least frowned upon.

I've also gained new insights into The Futility of Posture. To illustrate this we'll take gutter punks and Republicans. The fact is this: Unlike salmon, those with the most on their shoulders don't wear any stripes, while those with the most hollow and empty experiance are the flashiest of all. It's only decently well off well raised kids from nice suburban neighborhoods who decide it's cool to look really dirty and live in the gutter, in dangerous places, and have ripped up, torn clothes and generally and hygenically look like they don't care about themselves. Likewise, it's only people who've been born into money, or had an easy time, who are the strongest adhearants of the "anyone can work hard and get ahead and those who are poor are so because of their own fault" mythologies. In the former case it is because the "rebelling" youth is still primarily oriented on his own community. He's trying to defy and "show off" to his own comfortable, hygenic, secure millieu. That's why he is embarressed and invents lies about his past when confronted for questioning by actual homeless people who never had the choice. In the latter case, the Republican attempts to camaflague their guilt as well as the exploitative nature of those relationships from whence their income is derived.

I cannot respect such people, though I may still be polite. "We should all live in poverty and misery while working for the rich. We should all eat rice and chicken wings while we sell surf and turf with filet mingons." What kind of crap is that? You know how fucking amazing and full of potential technology is? You know how rich our society is and how much surplus is there? "You people", I say, "Want us to all to push the rock up the mountain until we die and it rolls back down?" You want us to eat raw meat when we've known about fire for thousands of years? You think we should all have to hunt our own animals to make our own clothes?

Then why the hell can't we get childcare together, or healthcare together? Or abolish hunger? Educate people? Absolute basics...

Such ideologies, completely devoid of respect, do not deserve it.

Such "ideologues", who on every oppertunity seek to verbally flatter the idea of the poor, say they have nothing against them, and respect poor people working hard with what they have, are in fact the ruddest people when in actual contact with the poor. The gawk at them, view them as exhibits, drive through their neighborhoods like it were a safari, and go into their stores only to make fun of the quality, and of the prices.

When you have little, and when life is a struggle, and your own condition is humble, you see those who edure these cirucmstances quite differently. If you actually do come from rags and go to riches, this will stay with you, which is why the offspring of such success stories are always so much more strongly attached to the idea, than are those who actually lived it, and among whom there is always to be found more room for doubt.

If you came from comfort you'll never know this. You will never know what it means to really respect someone. You are blind to the beauty and the dignity of sacrifice, and honesty when present will bounce off your ears.

Those who actually are homeless, and aren't so far gone with mental disabilities or drug habits, are actually very very concerned with hygine and apperance. This is because it is a humilitating condition to be homeless. Even if you have money, and are technically a "traveler", you are still homeless, and there are things you cannot do and places you cannot stay. They are things you must hide and words you must avoid. There are behavoirs you must learn in order to protect yourself. You may be working and homeless, but still you're chased and you're looked down on if the secret comes out. Like a closeted homosexual. You quitely and effectively brush your teeth, wear deoderant, and keep your clothes clean. You park or you sleep out of sight. No one must know. If they know you can't hang out in the diner or the coffee shop all night. You must pretend to be reading or studying.... even if you are in the meantime reading and studying and I am actually "working on this laptop", that is not my purpose. My purpose is to hide. I am hiding from that cheap motel with the urine-flavored disinfectant. I am hiding from the snow and from the temperature. I am hiding from my friends and from my crushes, because of the pain and the embarrassment which comes out with the truth.

I have also learned that the best writing comes through pad and pen. Or with typewriters. Computers with your hands faciliate the spread of intellectual diarreah. Everything comes out and is cheap. When it takes more energy, and limited quantities of ink and paper, you think more before you write. Your words have more value.

In life there was the bar at 2pm, and the Junkie I drove home in exchange for xanax and pepper steak. Xanax has the side effect of short term memory loss. I was not perpared for how extreme or disorienting this is. I have no idea how I was able to drive and survive on this stuff. I also had no idea what was going on in the morning when I was suddenly woken up and taken somewhere and I just went along, dilligently but confused, becuase I couldn't remember that day's plan and I was embarressed to ask for it. I didn't know if I was being kicked out or having a request fullfilled. Furthermore there were the bizarre stains of dairy and grain on the front of my shirt and on my pants. Multiple wrappers of ice cream sandwhiches on the passanger seat and floor of my car brought forth dim memories of gas station cravings, and oh my god, "How long have I been looking like shit? Has anyone noticed?"

There were elk in Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park



They had come down into the village and occupied a baseball diamond. They have horns and it would be dangerous for someone to mess with them. So they got to keep the diamond.

I have no map with highway names but I believe it was 36 that took me back from Estes Park to Boulder. That was beautiful... With the rockies the peaks are awesome, but its really the foothills, with their cayons, their rock, their gentle slopes ending in steep cliffs, which for their beauty and accessibility, can do pretty well to steal the show.

To the mexican resturant that exists in every city, with the hip guy and the teacher bartending there as the second job. Where people are friendly and you're talked to. Boulder is the easiest city to be homeless in that I've met. When you're in a car homeless, food is one of your biggest expenses. You can limit this by cooking out with stuff from a grocery store over a fire or on a camping stove in a national forrest. But you can't stay in the forrest, because you get lonely and miss people, so you must return to the cities, to the bar, to the dancing and of course the sex-potential.However, in most cities, the time it takes to drive to a forrest where you can cook out is quite long and at that point the cost in time and in gas begins to cut into what you save from food cost. In Boulder though the canyon roads with their pull offs and trails are right there. Also in Boulder it's probably hip in a fuzzy, over the top hippie sort of way to be "transient", and people are less likely to look at you weird for crawling into a car and lying down late at night.

Denver though wins out... through the quality of people. Boulder is too isolated, too into and of and for itself. Too fuzzy... too granola. Denver poses more big city challanges; like a slightly longer commute to a park or forrest where you can cook; but it has better views and better people. The people are still friendly as hell but they're more genuine in a way. There's more big city problems that can't be hidden, or forgotten. Homelessness, heroin, and poverty are present. In Boulder they don't exist or they are disguised.

Fishing in the Platte River above Denver was incredible.



I caught big brown trout here, and cooked them with the steak and cous cous. Though for some reason at this time my salt either got lost in the car or in the confusion when I packed up quick out of the snow storm; it still tasted great. Just 30 minutes later I was down from where I been; around 9,000 feet in this beautiful natural canyon with deer and great fresh trout fishing... and at a hip club 80s night with good drink prices and beautiful friendly people. I hung out with three industrial women who were nice and quite attractive and who took me to this noise night where i think someone was pretending to play a keyboard (I think) to a largely confused audiance. Then I met a French woman whose number I recieved but whom I neither had sex with nor was able to get a couch out of. But she bought me best Chinese food I've ever had, showed me around some hip areas, and provided me with a quite interesting series of social observation between herself and her friend.

Life was lived and words were written. At 4-5 am in an all night diner.

I know how beautiful life can be, and I know how to confront and deal with any problem cooly. I have only one fear, and one enemy, which is a certian type of beautiful women who with one look, or indiffernce alone, can drive me flying out of any bar and into the fog of night and madness. Yet her weakness is that she lives everywhere, on every continent, and eventually, will always come around.

It was the sweetest feeling, the most intenese feeling of being alive I have ever experainced.... to go from the bar, to go through the rain, to be drunk, to walk for miles in the wrong direction, to walk for more miles, to be alone and abandoned and sleep outside in the cold on a stoop, to come inside and drink strong cofffee for hours; to phyiscally shake and experiance profound human kindness and consideration. To engage with philosophy and for the words to come:

The emotion, experiance, and people I've met here, have been the most honest, serious, and intense of my life. I slept on the pavement in the cold and the rain, lost money on car trouble, and didn't know when I'd see a bed again. I've never been happier, and I've never truly appreciated what's important, until now. You don't need drugs, a career, a house, or an advertized product to decide things for you. Your life isn't "decided". You think it is decided. But that's all in your head. Life occurs. You don't need to be able to run a marathon. Just the courage, luck, and self confidence to take the first step.

This is not possible, or sustainable, for everyone currently (poverty, marriage, lack of childcare, atomization, prejudice, etc...). But I have been to the mountaintop. I have seen the promised land. He (god, manitou, spirit, intuition, chance, luck, whatever-you-want-to-call-it) let me up there and I didn't come down to take you with me. I came down to tell you that you have the power amongst yourselves to go anywhere you want. See the valleys, see the mountains, find your golden city and share a lifetime of honesty and respect. That is why care was invested in you, and that is what you will leave behind.

There are the quotes, the magazine clippings, and the many, many people. There's the story about the Communist with the most beautiful hair in the world who led the American delegation to China to fight against the Japanese invasion long before US intervention was official, who came back after 70 years to free me from prision-knife interrogation and helped us to defeat the racist vampire-cops and the safeway manager from the desert in the department store. There's the story about Ken the incredible, existential, human, whom I half expected to levitate or start glowing while we talked for hours at the Pep Boys. There's Nathaniel with the 24 hour film project, the woman who bought me a PBR whose daugher just gratuated from high school and who used to fly between SF and Boulder all the time for work. A bike courier, a bus ride, a goth industrial night (which was large, and though people were generally friendly, because they are goth they are more introverted than most Denver citizens). There was a porno and a laptop, and this kind of mock up of the Denver Arch de Triomphe, where I changed my socks out of the rain:



There are quotes from great thinkers and writers and a trip to guitar center. There's the Russian thinker, who said to us:

... in consequence again of those accursed laws of conciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration. You look into it, the object flies off into the air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame and consequently there is only the same outlet again- that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can.

Think you can write a better description of the current state of American progressive reality?

Last but not least I became more learned about death and life and shortcommings.

What am I for halloween?

I am the drifter with a guitar.
I am the waiter-musician.
I've seen honesty and sacrifice for others.
I've united the people a few times.

I reached across time and space to meet seriousness dead on.
I shook hands with a man.
And I bought drinks for a lady.
I know my own shortcommings.
And I'm ok with it.

I'll stay awhile.
And never miss a funeral.
So that when I am old.
I will not be afraid.

Cheers from the road.

To be continued...

Snow!

haha... i am in Colorado for three days before its snows where I'm camping out! First a little snow, but then I woke up the morning and there were at least 5 inches. This is all at 10,000 ft, near Aspen at the base of Mt Evans... I decided to pack up fast and throw everything in the car and get out of there before the forest road turned to crap. Now I'm in Denver. I still hope to do some climbing on my way out of this state once I leave.

But first this happened:

The sky leaving Louisiana in the morning is beautiful:



Driving through Texas up 287 (is it?) was cool... the Dallas plains gave way to real desert for the first time. Orangey red baked mesas appeared... small towns with lots of rail and old buildings and grain elevators were passed; and many old tiny overgrown abandoned houses existed. This was very photogenic, i should have had a real camera and spent more time here. Just a quick shot from the road:



Getting into New Mexico was awesome. More like a sandy desert with scrub brush; small hills and cliffs and giant mesas where you could see the eroded layers of rock. Listening to Hocico here quite fast where 75 mph (on I-40) was the posted limit rocked. I camped out in santa fe just as sun was setting, franticly driving around trying to find the right road and getting there to pitch the tent once it was dark.

Here's some of the Desert







Driving north from Santa Fe I took a wrong turn that took me into Taos, where the main highway becomes like a main street and the traffic is horrible. However, I got to pass through this senic canyon:



as well as cross an even bigger, very deep canyon.

South Central Colorado is very photogenic. Desert like New Mexico, but the mountains are slightly taller and much steeper. There's also lots of pretty, like

these aspens:



this train:



these old desert houses:



this sky was awesome, somewhere in the desert:



Coming to the town of Crestone I approach the beautiful Sangre De Christo Mountains.



Despite the desert surroundings they shared in common with the rest of the rockies beautiful alpine lakes, waterfalls, and of course, tall peaks.

Here's a view of the peaks near Challenger Peak.



I challenged Challenger to see if I could climb up to the top of it from the base camp and back again in one day. The base camp was around 8,000 ft, and the peak was around 14,000. This would be quite the challenge!

This is where I should have walked up



But instead I went up a narrower gully above a Moraine to the North side of the Peak. Unfortunately it was here that Challenger won the Challenge, as the climbing towards the peak got more and more difficult. I know I was at least with 500-800 feet of the tip top, but the wind and the altitude were really getting to me. Also, the gully became steeper and steeper and demanded a level of technical climbing that I did not have the gear for. After one or two slips I decided this was not the place for me to die so I turned around.

After coming back down to sleep I decided to drive around somewhere less steep but also tall and epic. So I drove northwest to the base of mount Evans, camping out on a forest road near twin lakes of 82 on the way to Aspen.

Then this happened:






The weather in such climates is always unpredictable, so I decided to pitch the tent and climb in the morning after it had settled. However, this did not occur, as it started to snow. Only about 3 inches came down, so I went about making dinner as normal. I stopped at a grocery to get some ground beef and made an awesome spaghetti boulangase with Wolf Blass shiraz.



However, when I woke up in the morning the snow was coming down faster and harder. I decided to break down fast and get out of there quick. This is what it looked like as I left the forest:



I ate breakfast at a bagel coffee place in Frisco and drove on through the snow (actually surprisingly easy to do with all wheel drive and a stick shift) to Denver. I'm a little disappointed I suspect that I haven't yet got to the top of this tall stuff I wanted to get to the top of. However, I learned this:

-These mountains have been around for a long time and will wait for me

-It might be nice to come back again and do more hiking, especially with someone else. All this setting up and breaking down, washing and cleaning and cooking, is a lot of work. It can get a little lonely on the mountains, and it would be nice to have company for personal as well as safety reasons next time I try this.

Denver is awesome. Come here.

So far the people here have been super nice. My friend is alive and well and sane and working for this film commission. I'm staying at her mom's house, which is only 2 blocks from my friend's condo. This mom is very nice though she is becoming one of those 'cat ladies' with like a million cats, although in a cool, former hippy sort of way. An old orange cat is here now and it is pretty friendly. I think it says hello.

We drove to Boulder and saw a film festival where people had to make a film in 24 hours using certain criteria. Many were bad but some were quite good. Unfortunately though the Master of Ceremonies figure has bad jokes and wouldn't give up and it took really long for the judges to decide the winner; anyways it was fun to attend. I need to say more about this but I'm tired now. I'll save that for the next blog.

The waiter guy from where we ate lunch gave me directions to the industrial music nights, which are all pretty close by. I've found a safe place to park by this mom's house and tomorrow I wander around downtown. Tonight is the first night in four nights that I sleep in a bed instead of a tent. I think it will rock.


Until then take care of yourselves, and I will be hanging out in Denver for a while getting a feel for it. When I feel like the feel is had and I'm starting to step on my host's toes I'll probably do a bit more hiking around and then head to the northwest. I'm more than hallways across the country now so Portland and Seattle are pretty close.

Boulder hippies are pretty ridiculous by the way. More on this later.