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Maddie - December 17th

Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico is a hard-bitten little town in the middle of the state without, to my eye, a hell of a lot of point to it. The town is best known for naming itself after a bad game show in the 50’s, changing the name from Hot Springs to its current moniker. The radio show Truth or Consequences did a live broadcast from Hot Springs and the town, in the immediate aftermath, got a whole lot of attention from newspapers and television. So, they changed the name of the town. Media whore-dom to an absurd degree.

Maddie works at one of the nicer restaurants off the interstate…one of the nicest in town. In T or C that means it’s really a rather abysmal place. It’s flat and open and the tables and chairs and booths are cheap, the upholstery is cracked. The menu, though, is seafood and steaks. Not terribly good seafood.  Can’t vouch for the steaks but they looked pretty rough coming out of the kitchen so I think probably not works of red meat art.  It’s like the place started out as a greasy spoon diner and then had an unforeseen growth spurt into a more refined restaurant and now is in an awkward adolescence waiting for the reality of the restaurant to catch up with its self-image.

Maddie is in her early 40’s and has the two traits that I’ve come to expect out of grown up but not yet old women working in restaurants anywhere outside of LA or New York or Chicago: subtle flirtatiousness, and; a beaten down quality that is simultaneously fascinating and depressing. This may be reflective of my bias in favor of people who are not very skilled at hiding the defeats life has dealt them. I operate under the assumption that once you’ve crossed 30 if you haven’t been on the wrong end of a few divine jokes you are either: a.) lying…and denial is boring, or; b.) plain old boring without the entertainment value of denial.

Maddie has an effortless beauty about her. She wears very little, if any, makeup, is slender and tan and has both smile and frown lines on her face. Her eyes are a tired green, especially on a Friday night when she’s covering the whole floor on her own and not particularly busy. The tips on this night are going to be disappointing. I’m one of the last two tables in the place and she tells me it’s been slow all night. I’m in the best spot in any restaurant if you’re looking for conversation; all the way back one booth away from the server’s station. This means that anyone working in the joint, which on this night is Maddie and a sullen busgirl, will be passing near frequently.

We get to talking in between her bouts of action. Whether back in the server’s station or working the floor she is frequently looking out the windows, scanning the parking lot. At first I think she’s simply hoping business will pick up but something about her anticipation makes me think she’s waiting for someone.

She’s up at the register ringing out a to-go order that’s being picked up when a young man walks in. Even with my lousy eye sight I can see he’s mind blowingly gorgeous. He’s a lanky 6’1”, slender, and even under his light jacket you can tell he’s rippled with muscle…not big, buffed out weight lifter muscles but well-defines long and slender muscles. He’s got a ridiculously square jaw, pretty eyelashes, deep green eyes and dark hair that is an unruly mess. It doesn’t appear to be the fashionably and deliberately mussed hair you see all over the television. It’s more like his hair is rebellious in nature and is going to go in whatever direction it damn well pleases despite his best efforts to tame it.

Maddie sees him and lights up. She bounces out from behind the register and throws her arms around his neck. He responds by picking her up and spinning her around. They have a brief and excited conversation that ends with her taking out her keys, removing two from the ring and handing them to him.

Bet I can guess where he’s going. Though he is devastatingly attractive he is young. Really, young…twenty-five tops. I get the attraction but…wow. He’s really young.
I ponder this for awhile, wondering why the older-woman/younger-man thing freaks me out a little when I know full well that if the genders were reversed I’d only think it mildly amusing. I was lost in this analysis to such an extent that I hadn’t noticed Maddie come back to the server’s station.

“Well, my night just got a whole lot better,” she said.

“Good looking kid” I said, putting a lot of emphasis on the kid. Maybe a little too much emphasis on it.

She turned to look at me with a smug grin.

“He sure is. God, he’s beautiful.”

I just nodded.

She laughed.

“His name is Hunter. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and he’s my son.”

Nearly Busted in the Palisades - Dec. 15th

We stopped in Los Angeles to take care of a few things that could only be done in LA and so Zoe could stop in at Intemperantia, the greatest Chocolate shop in the world, to help out with the holiday rush and make us some much needed cash money.

The errands:

• Oil Change - done, but Prophet tried to murder the huge but docile black lab that one of the other customers had there.
• Perscriptions refilled - piece o' cake.
• Figure out what the hell is happening with our mail - more on this below
• Chiropractor appointment - struck out
• Various and sundry other knicks and knacks - done but time consuming.

Our mail situation is kinda weird. Originally, we were going to move to Chicago and dutifully turned in all the information to the post office. Then the Chicago thing took a header. So, we were going to have our mail held at the post office. Finally we decided that since we'd be making multiple trips to the Bay Area to see Stephanie and her posse that we should have the mail forwarded there. On our visit to the Steph a few days earlier we had a bunch of mail waiting for us but had a pretty good amount of bills that we know are due that didn't show up. My mission was to go to the post office to determine if anything had been held there by mistake.

It went about like you'd figure.

Wait in long line. Loooooong line. Finally get up to the window and explain the situation. I am instructed to go across the street to the Mail Carrier Annex and inquire there.

Prophet and I mosey across the street.

There are four entrances to the parking lot at the Mail Carrier Annex in Venice. Everyone of them has a large sign which in large and imposing letters tells you that "THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY AND NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. DO NOT ENTER." Now, since the USPS is truly a quasi-public or quasi-private entity (depending on how you want to look at it) you gotta figure that at best it's quasi-private property. Since there were only four entrances and none of them allowed entry based on the private property thing mentioned above I figured that truthfully, I could quasi-enter. I was wrong.

Entrance #1: Prophet and I mosey in. Two postal carriers lounging in the parking lot begin screaming. "Hey, Hey! You can't come in here!" I ask where I'm supposed to enter. They say I can't. I tell them I was told to come to this location to inquire about missing mail. They shout "Go around." Prophet growled at them. Good Dog.

Entrance #2: Same two guys. Same result. Prophet barked. Good Dog.

Entrance #3: Other side of building. Differenty guy. Same result. Prophet peed on the sidewalk. Very Good Dog.

Entrance #4: Large postal carrier physically plants himself between me and the door to turn me away. I explain my plight. He tells me to go to the Southwest Entrance. I tell him I already have and was chased off. He says he doesn't care. I inform him that I care rather intensely and "go around" is no longer a viable strategy because I have gone all the way around at this point. He thinks about this. Prophet growls. Good Dog with maybe not the best sense of timing. "The Dog can't go in there," he says pointing to the door. Of course, I knew that. I offer to tie her up to the sign post. He thinks about this and thinks it's a bad idea. He asks for my name, address, etc. He writes it down and disappears inside the sanctum sanctorum.

He comes back in about two seconds and tells me there's nothing there. I ask to speak to a supervisor. He is a supervisor. I ask to speak to his supervisor. He says "no".

This was not fruitful.

As we walked dejectedly away, Prophet and I ran into the wonderful Pakistani gentleman who had been our mail carrier when we lived in Venice. Freshly shorn and clean shaven he did not recognize me but did know Prophet. We talked and he asked me where we'd moved. I told him we'd moved nowhere. Took awhile to explain that. In the process I mentioned our mail problem. He went in and checked. He was in there about fifteen minutes. Came back. Nothing.

Bummer.

That wasn't even the bad part of the day...

California Thaings - Dec. 13 & 14 2004

Over the years I've argued with almost all of my non-California friends who insist that California is filled with goofballs and freaks. My position is that it's really not all that weird out here, nor is it any more laid back than, say, Colorado. That and I yell at them to stop referring to the place as "Cali" because it sounds really stupid when they call it that. I've made very little headway on either.

So, okay...I'm wrong. About the weird part, anyway. The "Cali" thing I stand behind.

Along with the Naked Finn in Arcata I had a couple of more uniquely California moments in the last couple of days.

Rat Woman

I was getting my haircut in Danville, CA. Danville is the home of Stephanie and Stephen, two friends who let us hang out for a few days to take a welcome break from the road. Getting shorn was traumatic enough but then it got really weird. I was talking with Ann, the woman cutting my hair, and her breathtakingly beautiful compatriot, Lisa. Lisa is one of those women who is attractive, not devastating, but oozes sexuality to such an extreme degree that she frightens most men. Not because of any of the "she's too strong and independent" crap reasons usually sighted in discussions on this topic but because she sends out such fierce pheremones that most any guy on the planet would happily drive a railroad spike into his eye if she asked us to do so. That's a heady power and one that we fear.

Both of them have been tending to Danvillieans hair for ten years. Danville is one of those enclaves that on the surface seems nice and benign but after about 24 hours starts to weird you out. It is an affluent and isolated enclave with most of the things you could ever crave available within a few blocks. As such, if you don't want to, you never have to leave it. Yeah, that's nice and all but it gets a touch Stepford after awhile. It is a place where presentation is everything. Everyone is spectacularly well put together and even though the over-riding vibe is casual it is a tremendously deliberate casual. So, I figured hair is a big deal to the denizens and that Ann and Lisa had seen some grand scale weirdness.

I was sitting in the chair looking in the mirror watching my locks disappear in great, ungainly clumps. Via the mirror I could see through the glass doors into the parking lot. Ann was beginning to tell me about a weird thing that had been happening recently. Before she could give me even the briefest introduction a shiny and relatively new BMW screeched to a stop right in front of the doors. A plasticene looking woman in her forties jumped out of the car carrying a small paper bag. Ann said, "Oh shit...it's her." She walked right up to the door (without opening it) and shouted something unintelligible but, judging from the deep red shade of her face, sincerely heartfelt. She opened the bag and upturned it. A small dark object plopped out onto the sidewalk right in front of the door. The woman screamed something else, turned on heel and marched back to her car. She left the parking lot after laying down some serious rubber on the pavement. Lisa open the door, looked down at the object and screamed something unintelligible but sincerely heartfelt.

I had yet to see what the object was but was betting heavily on dog crap.

Nope.

It was a rather sizeable dead rat.

Here's what led to the demise of the rat...

I Ain't Been Here In Awhile

Whew...been gone from the cyber community for awhile. Decided to stop writing and spend more time talking and observing. My, what an interesting week it's been. There will be new posts up on Tuesday or Wednesday about the weirdness of the last week and they'll be back dated. Highlights are: Proof that, despite my arguments with many folks over the years that California isn't all that weird, it turns out California is pretty weird; A darn fine time in Benson, AZ. where the Killer Guard Dog discovered the GREATEST YARD EVER; One of the best Civics discussions I've ever had, which took place with an arch-conservative in a motel parking lot in Truth Or Consequences, NM.; Why Silver City, despite numerous love letters in the media, isn't remotely close to being as cool as Bisbee; The Saddest Woman Ever; Shamrock, TX....someone please remove it from the face of the earth; and religious college wars in Springfield, MO.;...and a few others that are percolating.

Tonight, we're bunked down in an old-school motor lodge in Springfield, MO. It's turned quite cold which makes the powerful heater here in the room seem like the greatest appliance of all time. Zoe is under some heavy blankets and has Prophet nuzzled up against her. They're both asleep and looking pretty content. Or pretty and content. Or something like that.

Earlier in this journey we stayed in the town of Colby, KS. Colby was chosen as a stop on the drive because it was late, we were tired, and it had the same name as the son of a good friend. Last night we balanced it out by staying in Erick, OK. We chose Erick because it was late, we were tired, and it has the same name of another son of the same good friend...even if the spelling isn't quite right. We drove on today to Tulsa for a nice lunch and hang with my folks and pushed on a bit so we could get a jump on tomorrow's sprint to Madison. We're hustling to Madison because we're going to be sitting down for a week or so for the holidays and because we are going to call every dentist in town to see if someone can do something about the cracked tooth I have. Here's a safety tip...if you have a cracked tooth and you know you have a cracked tooth don't let anything remotely cold hit it. This escalates the pain from dull throb to YOWZA. I make this mistake about once an hour. You'd think I'd learn, huh?

Thanks for all the input on where we should end up whether you did so on this blog or via a personal email. All votes are greatly appreciated. We're still evaluating.

Oh, yeah...my hair is now very, very short. Like, the military would accept it (barely). And, for the first time in, I think, four years I am completely clean shaven. I look like a twenty year old geek but it has been easier to get folks to open up when I strike up conversations. The downside, apart from the 20 year old geek thing, is that my neck and face are always cold and when I walk past something reflective and catch a glimpse of myself I am confused as to who it that looks back at me. Bad craziness.

Please, read the post below for an important update.

Dimwit

Some of you who have been following along since the beginning of the trip will remember some posts by a gentleman going by the handle of Dimwit. I checked my email for the first time in about a week and Dimwit had sent me a rather lovely and sad email five days ago. I'm hoping he'll give me permission to post it here. I know this young man a little and his handle is self-depracatingly incorrect. I assure you he is not in the least Dim. He did ask me to pass on his thanks to those folks who emailed him with their good thoughts when he signed off from the boards due to a vague "family emergency" and his email told me I could go ahead and elucidate a bit.

His father and sister were driving in rural Indiana and were hit by a drunk driver. His father passed away and his younger sister was hurt quite badly..her recovery is still up in the air. 

I hope you will join me in sending on your thoughts and prayers for him and his mother in what is a particularly painful time.

Decision Time

So...we've been hanging out in the East Bay area for the last few days. We needed to get off the road for awhile, take a break from driving and motels and the road food. Zoe's friend Stephanie and her husband Stephen have let us take up considerable space in their casa and have made the ultimate concession to Prophet by locking their two cats in a bedroom during the day and allowing the Killer Guard Dog to have the run of the place. At night we take Prophet into our room with us and the kitties come out and sniff and tap at our door and drive the little dog mad. A small price to pay for Prophet but in her teaspoon sized brain it seems like a huge imposition.

Today is a day of great activity. We woke up early for us and took the dog to the vet. She has a bum leg and a strange little cyst on her ribs. All is well and she'll be fine. We came back to the casa and spent the rest of the morning with Steph's two babies, Kai and Lola, seven month old twins. Kai seems to like me because I lift him up and make noises and bounce him and the lad craves motion. Lola likes me for a minute or two and then looks at me and her beautiful little smile mutates slowly into a look of horror and betrayal and she starts screaming bloody murder. Which, you know, doesn't do much for a guy's self esteem. This is generally the impact I have on chicks so it's kind of a rerun of my entire life.

Of course, they both love Zoe. She talks and coos and sings to them and dances with them and I think Prophet is getting jealous.

This afternoon I make the long lonely trek (okay...it ain't long and its crowded and bustling) into Danville and get shorn. Time to make the hair go away for awhile. Letting it go long and untamed was cool for awhile but I've noticed that I have to work alot harder to put folks that I meet along the road at ease so it's time to get a little respectable looking...or at least to look a little less like a big, scary, hairy man.

Oh, yeah...and we've gotta figure out where we're going to live.

Interesting People

I've gotten some questions and emails from folks wondering who the most interesting person I've met is. While I'm sure the question is in regard to the various road trips of the last three years the most interesting person I know is someone I've had the pleasure of knowing for many years...someone I lucked into meeting through an accident of shared rental property.

To meet him go here.

Along with being the most interesting he is truly one of the best.

Eureka

That's a place, not an expression of joy...in this context anyway.

We escaped Eugene and the rain and drove south to Ashland...and more rain.

Ashland is fascinating. It's the town that Shakespeare built. The home of the Oregon Shakespeare festival and Southern Oregon University, this mini-city is rich in culture, has an unbelievable theatre scene, is surrounded by mountains and rivers and, if you mosey ten miles north to Medford, is infinitely affordable. It's made the cut of places we want to live.

We rolled out of Ashland bound for Eureka.The Eureka/Arcata area is the hub of Humboldt county in Northern California. Now, most of you think of Northern California as San Francisco. Inaccurate. Look at a map...there's a whole state worth of space north of San Francisco. Eureka is up in redwoods territory and sits right on the ocean. It is one of the most beautiful areas in the country. It's kind of hard to describe, kind of like the Grand Canyon, ultimately, is just a big ass hole in the ground and any attempt to capture the grandeur of it is bound to sound like a bad hallmark card (redundant, I know).

Every hippie who didn't end up in Venice is in Eureka. This is a town that passed a resolution in 1991 that declared itself a haven for draft resisters from the Vietnam War. That's one of the more moderate policies Humboldt County has passed in the last 15 years. So, I think we can safely say it's of the liberal persuasion.

Last night while walking around the parking lot of the motel (couldn't get cell reception) I got to see a crazy European struggling with culture shock. I thought, at first, he was a local. Average build but long brown hair with a thick bushy beard. This describes roughly 50% of the male population of Eureka/Arcata. He was wearing a ski jacket, a towel, and sandals. You read that right. He was struggling with figuring out how to get into the pool area of the motel, methodically trying every door, none of which yielded to his pushing and prodding. I figured he was a local trying to sponge his way into a hot pool or jacuzzi because he didn't appear to have a key.

The Best Policy

Weaverville, CA. is an old logging town buried in the mountains between Redding and Eureka. It is in a gorgeous setting and has a quaint little downtown. Outside of the two blocks of downtown, though, you are in a small logging town littered with hardware stores and chainsaw outlets, etc.

In a non-descript market/gas station on the edge of town I went in to get myself some tea and procure a coffee for Zoe. I met Al. Al is a gentleman in his early 50's. He's a little shorter than I am, slender, healthy looking, with an easy laugh and a well trimmed salt and pepper beard. He has the hard, calloused hands of a workingman. He was ladling up some $0.99 soup.

Al and I started chatting as we got our various forms of liquid refreshment. He had a newspaper next to him. I asked him what he thought of the Homeland Security bill that was rumored to be coming up for vote that day. He turned toward the cash register.

"Sandy. I need a ruling here."

Sandy was the matronly and taciturn woman manning the register and apparently the owner of the joint. I saw, over the cash register, a sign that in big letters said "NO POLITICS".

He told her what I had asked and she nodded and said, simply, "Yep."

Al explained to me that Sandy had implemented a no political discussion policy in her store. Whoever violated it had to pay for everyone's purchase who was in the store at that time. I was pretty happy only Al was there.

Sandy didn't talk much. Al told me that in this small town there was a pretty even split between those who supported the President and those who opposed him. The disagreements started to get nasty. "Really hateful," he said.

"We're a small community here. Once the politicians are done trying to fool everyone they go on their way but we're still here stuck with each other. In a small town you got to be there for each other. Especially a place like this where we're so remote. Sandy got mad about everyone yelling at each other and one guy won't talk to another guy now 'cause they disagree about Bush and Kerry or whatever. It really has taken a toll."

I asked Sandy how long she'd have her policy in place.

"Well, I thought I could stop it after the election and then everybody would be embarrassed at how bad they'd been behaving. But that didn't happen."

She looked sad.

"I don't much like any politician. Don't know why we're hating each other over which darn liar we decided to believe."

I asked her again how long her No Politics policy would be in place...

"Until we all start playing nice, again."

Best policy I've seen in years.

Oregon

In Oregon it rains.

In Hood River, a pretty little town hard on the south bank of the mighty Columbia, it rains.

In Astoria, a pretty little town of weather beaten homes hard on the south bank of the mighty Columbia and opening on to the Pacific, it rains.

In Cannon Beach, a pretty little town right on the edge of the world feeling for all the world like the ocean will come and plow the pines and the cottages into oblivion, it rains.

In Newport, a pretty little town that serves as the cultural hub of the Oregon Coast, it rains.

In Eugene, liberal cool latte driven Eugene, the intellectual hub of the whole state, it rains.

It rains. It's beautiful and it rains. It's interesting and fun and riddled with so much natural beauty it makes you dizzy.

And it rains.

I think the next time I see the sun I'm likely to stop in slack-jawed wonder and freeze up and ponder this wondrous sight and know not what it is. I will hold a ritual celebrating this once a decade Oregon occurrence and in the madness of the moment tear off all my clothes and run down the middle of the interstate screaming "Baboo! Baboo!"