San Diego to Anchorage: The Grapes of Rat
The Grapes of Rat
“A good plan executed violently today is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” -General George S. Patton Jr.
“A vague plan executed on the internet while your wife is hollerin at the dumb ass cute boy on Survivor is the best of all.”-Vermin
So there I sat in my cubicle, the American dream appeared to be well on the way into taking one of its periodic majestic swan dives into a barrel of shit and I was contemplating myself into a grade A Midwest rust bowl funk. It seemed no matter how many belligerent 400lb misdirected youths got tazed on Cops my attitude did not improve. It was time to do something ludicrous and poorly planned.
I did the only rational thing a person concerned about global warming could do, I got on the internet and signed up to burn up liquefied dinosaurs like a frat boy at 10 cent beer night.
Plan number A (leg 2)
San Diego to Anchorage
The Players
Left to right:
Vermin - cube dwelling geek, paws feverishly at his keyboard for 40 hours a week trying to exceed his internal and external customers increasing expectations (so that the occasional food pellet will fall on his cedar chips in a sick experiment in behavioral psychology that has B.F. Skinner smiling behind gods one way mirror). Notice original Cack has a minked out gas tank circa 1995 predating the stunt boyz furred out stunt bikes by at least 5 years.
Drifter - innocent victim of last summers adventure. (http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=265019)
Dollbaby - saw the light of day for the first time 9 minutes after drifter in 1994. 3.5 lbs of high class lady. The first time I met her she grabbed my thumb like a throttle. Her little translucent fingers were so small they didn't make it all the way around. I was informed last winter that she wanted to go on an excellent adventure. With my adventurin bike stuffed in Unks garage in San Diego near the border of Mexico that left only one logical choice, Anchorage.
I thought the county family services agency would take her away from me for doing such a brutal trip so I tried to talk her down to a leasurely putt to Seattle or Missoula but she was having none of it. Game on.
Cohorts of sorts
Ant - A good woman in trying circumstances. Her sister married this clown that keeps showing up and messing up her routine.
Unk - Nice guy, big shooter, no doubt filled in his vacation request online without printing it out and scribbling all over it. The world needs people like this. He can pay attention to stuff for hours and he has been well rewarded. Needless to say my entire scenario makes him kweezy (sp)*
*my daygum computer tells me when a word is spelled wrong with those cute skwiggly underlines and then doesn't tell me how to fix it so let this be the big spelling disclaimer. Nearly every word from here on out will be misspelled at my leasure.
Stay Tuned
“A good plan executed violently today is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” -General George S. Patton Jr.
“A vague plan executed on the internet while your wife is hollerin at the dumb ass cute boy on Survivor is the best of all.”-Vermin
So there I sat in my cubicle, the American dream appeared to be well on the way into taking one of its periodic majestic swan dives into a barrel of shit and I was contemplating myself into a grade A Midwest rust bowl funk. It seemed no matter how many belligerent 400lb misdirected youths got tazed on Cops my attitude did not improve. It was time to do something ludicrous and poorly planned.
I did the only rational thing a person concerned about global warming could do, I got on the internet and signed up to burn up liquefied dinosaurs like a frat boy at 10 cent beer night.
Plan number A (leg 2)
San Diego to Anchorage
The Players
Left to right:
Vermin - cube dwelling geek, paws feverishly at his keyboard for 40 hours a week trying to exceed his internal and external customers increasing expectations (so that the occasional food pellet will fall on his cedar chips in a sick experiment in behavioral psychology that has B.F. Skinner smiling behind gods one way mirror). Notice original Cack has a minked out gas tank circa 1995 predating the stunt boyz furred out stunt bikes by at least 5 years.
Drifter - innocent victim of last summers adventure. (http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=265019)
Dollbaby - saw the light of day for the first time 9 minutes after drifter in 1994. 3.5 lbs of high class lady. The first time I met her she grabbed my thumb like a throttle. Her little translucent fingers were so small they didn't make it all the way around. I was informed last winter that she wanted to go on an excellent adventure. With my adventurin bike stuffed in Unks garage in San Diego near the border of Mexico that left only one logical choice, Anchorage.
I thought the county family services agency would take her away from me for doing such a brutal trip so I tried to talk her down to a leasurely putt to Seattle or Missoula but she was having none of it. Game on.
Cohorts of sorts
Ant - A good woman in trying circumstances. Her sister married this clown that keeps showing up and messing up her routine.
Unk - Nice guy, big shooter, no doubt filled in his vacation request online without printing it out and scribbling all over it. The world needs people like this. He can pay attention to stuff for hours and he has been well rewarded. Needless to say my entire scenario makes him kweezy (sp)*
*my daygum computer tells me when a word is spelled wrong with those cute skwiggly underlines and then doesn't tell me how to fix it so let this be the big spelling disclaimer. Nearly every word from here on out will be misspelled at my leasure.
Stay Tuned
Settin the stage
headed on out of the house and cruised down to the airport in sweet thangs practical mobile. I was somewhat anxious as the volume of stuff I had packed for the trip wouldn’t fit in the trunk of her largish American sedan. I could tell that this trip was gonna be different from Drifters high plains ramble and suffering festival of 2007.
The first 15 minutes of Drifters trip involved getting strafed by a violent Midwestern thunderstorm on a two lane highway with no where to hide. Lets just say Doll babys trip started a little different.
As we blasted through the upthereosphere at a killion miles an hour I went through my exacting mental preparations. Did I remember to get the tire shipped? Bear mace? Oh well breath deep and let er rip hain’t a damn thing I can do about it now. As an aside here I must confess at some point during the winter when I first conceived this routine I did entangle myself with resources to find the best roads to ride and I had made a preferred route. I made lists of stuff. Well, as the departure came near I couldn’t take the pressure of an organized routine so I (subconsciously) freaked out and lost the lists and grabbed my Rand McNally trucker atlas and crammed a bunch of stuff in garbage bags and hit the door, clutching two passports and 2 plane tickets in my sweaty Corona holders. That’s how I roll.
Ever wonder why there is so much suffering in a world created by a kind and loving god? He was distracted by a game of checkers in the desert.
Ordinarilly on an excellent adventure I go through my beloved high plains transmogrification. This time was entirely different. Instead of my usual gradual decent into a delusional state by traveling west into increasingly arid, unforgiving and barren land I was vomited out of a massive shrieking aluminum tube into a earthly paradise.
Upon exiting the tube Vermin and Dollbaby where immediately snatched up and hugged by Aant while Unk revealed that he “can’t wait to get that piece of shit out of my garage”
First things first
Soaking it in
We wake up in luxury on day one with nothing planned except for attempting to get the bike running. The first serious tension of the trip came when I had made arrangements in advance at “Fun Bike Center” Honda dealer to have my tire swapped out. Everything went smooth in the disassembly we got in the car and waltzed right over to the dealer pretty as you please and they told us to get lost the bike was over ten years old and they wouldn’t work on it. I told them the bike isn’t within ten miles so couldn’t they just cross their eyes a little turn the 0 into a 9 on the paperwork and change the flippin tire? NO! I argued that the concept of an alloy wheel and its relationship to the motorcycle tire was fairly timeless and risk free. NO!. A deep ember of hate started to glow right next to my stent and I had to beat my testosterone back down. NO! The inner carney in me was fixin to opening a kegger of whoop ass but I am a semi rational grownup now with kids. I had nothing but a scrawny eyebrow to fling toward the heavens. Unks heart began to sink as it became apparent that the wheelless refuse in his garage may never leave. Cooler heads eventually prevailed and they gave me the address of a local wrench that would do it post haste.
I still have deep animosity toward these fellas. Here is a guy 2500 miles from home with his young daughter and needs a (paid for) risk free favor and they wouldn’t budge. I hope the same thing happens to them some day. In Mexico they would drive out from the shop with their mom and pick you up feed you dinner and change your tire. I will save a spot for these guys in my cubicle in hell.
The shop they sent me to was called C & D and they hooked me right up. Please give these guys your business they were cool and they didn't appear to be afraid of repairing motorcycles like the other gomers did.
Tire swap complete all that was left was to put in the new battery. Well needless to say I didn’t have the shop manual that explains in minute detail about how to disassemble the tupperware cladding so I improvised (cue the shrieking Honda Pacific Coast Mavens).
Unfortunately the electromagnetic pulses from the reciprocating saw messed up my flux capacitor and I went shooting off through time willy nilly.
Then in a depression era make work program Franklin Delanor Roosevelt had everything painted vivid hues to give Kodak corp a market for its latest invention Kodachrome
A futile attempt to keep vermin off the USS Midway
I did almost cut through some large black wire bundle but unk shrieked and stopped me before I severed this fine beasts nervous system.
Dollbaby reads the bear mace instructions, unlike me she is prepared. I myself wouldn’t start reading the instructions until I was halfway down the bears esophagus.
Freshening up with a new coat of “don’t hit me”.
No comment (chicks do take more stuff)
This is how Vermin rolls, cack steady on the launch pad t minus 12 and counting
Unks neoretro cruiser set on stun.
Do to no small amount of taunting and a desire to see this homeless shopping cart of a motorcycle leave his premises and not come back unk and ant have decided to escort us some unknown distance to the north.
[
__________________--------------------------------------------The first 15 minutes of Drifters trip involved getting strafed by a violent Midwestern thunderstorm on a two lane highway with no where to hide. Lets just say Doll babys trip started a little different.
As we blasted through the upthereosphere at a killion miles an hour I went through my exacting mental preparations. Did I remember to get the tire shipped? Bear mace? Oh well breath deep and let er rip hain’t a damn thing I can do about it now. As an aside here I must confess at some point during the winter when I first conceived this routine I did entangle myself with resources to find the best roads to ride and I had made a preferred route. I made lists of stuff. Well, as the departure came near I couldn’t take the pressure of an organized routine so I (subconsciously) freaked out and lost the lists and grabbed my Rand McNally trucker atlas and crammed a bunch of stuff in garbage bags and hit the door, clutching two passports and 2 plane tickets in my sweaty Corona holders. That’s how I roll.
Ever wonder why there is so much suffering in a world created by a kind and loving god? He was distracted by a game of checkers in the desert.
Ordinarilly on an excellent adventure I go through my beloved high plains transmogrification. This time was entirely different. Instead of my usual gradual decent into a delusional state by traveling west into increasingly arid, unforgiving and barren land I was vomited out of a massive shrieking aluminum tube into a earthly paradise.
Upon exiting the tube Vermin and Dollbaby where immediately snatched up and hugged by Aant while Unk revealed that he “can’t wait to get that piece of shit out of my garage”
First things first
Soaking it in
We wake up in luxury on day one with nothing planned except for attempting to get the bike running. The first serious tension of the trip came when I had made arrangements in advance at “Fun Bike Center” Honda dealer to have my tire swapped out. Everything went smooth in the disassembly we got in the car and waltzed right over to the dealer pretty as you please and they told us to get lost the bike was over ten years old and they wouldn’t work on it. I told them the bike isn’t within ten miles so couldn’t they just cross their eyes a little turn the 0 into a 9 on the paperwork and change the flippin tire? NO! I argued that the concept of an alloy wheel and its relationship to the motorcycle tire was fairly timeless and risk free. NO!. A deep ember of hate started to glow right next to my stent and I had to beat my testosterone back down. NO! The inner carney in me was fixin to opening a kegger of whoop ass but I am a semi rational grownup now with kids. I had nothing but a scrawny eyebrow to fling toward the heavens. Unks heart began to sink as it became apparent that the wheelless refuse in his garage may never leave. Cooler heads eventually prevailed and they gave me the address of a local wrench that would do it post haste.
I still have deep animosity toward these fellas. Here is a guy 2500 miles from home with his young daughter and needs a (paid for) risk free favor and they wouldn’t budge. I hope the same thing happens to them some day. In Mexico they would drive out from the shop with their mom and pick you up feed you dinner and change your tire. I will save a spot for these guys in my cubicle in hell.
The shop they sent me to was called C & D and they hooked me right up. Please give these guys your business they were cool and they didn't appear to be afraid of repairing motorcycles like the other gomers did.
Tire swap complete all that was left was to put in the new battery. Well needless to say I didn’t have the shop manual that explains in minute detail about how to disassemble the tupperware cladding so I improvised (cue the shrieking Honda Pacific Coast Mavens).
Unfortunately the electromagnetic pulses from the reciprocating saw messed up my flux capacitor and I went shooting off through time willy nilly.
Then in a depression era make work program Franklin Delanor Roosevelt had everything painted vivid hues to give Kodak corp a market for its latest invention Kodachrome
A futile attempt to keep vermin off the USS Midway
I did almost cut through some large black wire bundle but unk shrieked and stopped me before I severed this fine beasts nervous system.
Dollbaby reads the bear mace instructions, unlike me she is prepared. I myself wouldn’t start reading the instructions until I was halfway down the bears esophagus.
Freshening up with a new coat of “don’t hit me”.
No comment (chicks do take more stuff)
This is how Vermin rolls, cack steady on the launch pad t minus 12 and counting
Unks neoretro cruiser set on stun.
Do to no small amount of taunting and a desire to see this homeless shopping cart of a motorcycle leave his premises and not come back unk and ant have decided to escort us some unknown distance to the north.
[
Revisiting the depression
The Quest for the American Dream at the Crystal Palace
or "The rise and fall of country and western civilzation"
Woke up in a hotel on Venice beach. Ate the Continental breakfast shooting the breeze with some Germans (ich bin ein dummer amerikaner jah). Unk, Ant, Dollbaby and myself seem fairly rudderless at this point and I will be damned if I will be accused of having a plan.
Packed 'em up
5 Kilograms of excrement
2 Kilogram bag
I originally had planned to head up the angels crest road and all these other twisties north and east of Los Angeles I had read about in cycle magazines since I was a pup but Unk had spent a lot of time polishing the bottom of his floorboards and didn’t want to scratch them up on curvy roads so we headed west toward Malibu. I actually think he may have been trying to ditch me for a little quality time with ant but I didn’t take the hint. In reality we live so far away from our loved ones I wanted Dollbaby to get to know her Ant and Unk up close and personal rather than in a mass gathering every other year, there are plenty of curvy roads ahead so I figure the trade is well worth it.
Leaving town
Malibu beach bums still exist. Livin la vida loca in the camper on the beach. Hmmmmm.
We cruised west a little and pulled into a gas station, in Malibu, to get some more go juice and while I was filling cack up a 60 something woman in a new Mercedes pulled up and started shooting the breeze with Dollbaby. Doll told the lady what we were all about. The lady was startled and grinned from ear to ear as I am sure she probably couldn’t imagine such a cool trip. As the lady turned to leave I thought she started misting up a little. Maybe her dad was too busy to take her on trips, maybe he did take her and he was gone on the biggest trip of all at the moment. Either way I knew we were in the sweet spot of life if we had that effect on a rich old lady in Malibu.
My Pacific Coast on the Pacific Coast
At this point we light up the bikes and cruise west into Ventura. I didn’t see any town as we were on the state highway. We pulled over in a construction turnoff to get our wits about us.
Miscellaneous agriculture off the coast by Oxnard (hi roboter)
I was entirely unaffected by L.A.
So I see this whole thing as a feel good summer blockbuster like “Little Miss Sunshine” but with a more rubbishy littery feel. The demographics will be great, wide range. It’ll kill on both coasts and the middle. Have your people git with mine.
Vermin=Nicholas Cage
Dollbaby=Miley Cyrus
Ant=Jessica Simpson
Unk=Montgomery Burns
Intro: Long, sweeping, moving, montage of two renegade bikes rolling down the pacific coast highway with the song Born to Be Mild by the band Steppenshit, go to a medium shot as they pull into a gravel construction pulloff
Close up on the Verm
Verm: Hain’t this purdy
Ant: Why are we stopping?
Unk: I have to pee.
Verm: Hey where did my maglight go?
Doll: Back there (waving her hand vaguely backwards toward LA)
Verm: Daaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmit
Unk: I have to pee.
Verm: Where are we? (looking at trucker atlas)
Ant: Why don’t we use our GPS? (Snotty rich Ant speak for my stuff is better than yours) Dang the batteries are dead (futily shaking the unit).
Verm: (smiles a non battery needin smile) Why don’t we use my trucker atlas?
Ant: I am hungry
Verm: They make a mean chicken fried steak at Buck Owens Crystal Palace in Bakersfield that killed ‘im deader’n a doornail about a year ago. ( Imagine the glory of creating a delicacy so delicious it is lethal. It is like a hillbilly version of them poisonous Japanese puffer fish).
Unk: Bakersfield is heinous the coast is beautiful. I have to pee.
Doll: Are we there yet?
Verm: Where?
Dollbaby: Why don’t you use that porta potti? (she points to the porta john, the only visible building anywhere, 75 feet across the road)
Unk: Oh
(Cue ominous important decision makin music)
Ant: I gotta have that chicken fried steak.
Verm: (Singing way out of tune, I believe the word is caterwauling, sounding not unlike the uvulating shrieking of some mourning Bedouins)
“you don’t know me but you don’t like me
you could care less how I feel
how many of you that sit and judge me
ever walked the streets of Bakersfield”
Doll: Cripe
And this is how it came to pass that we missed the entire pacific coast of and chose Bakersfield as our destination.
Old School Country Music Rant
(you type A personality types can go get a cup of coffee you will not understand this part)
Musically I started out normally enough with my Monkees records and my Beatles lunch box, this quite naturally led to the Rolling Stones and Zepellin. I was pretty much an archetypical couch layin long hair snot nosed punk. So far, So good. then on June 1st 1977 I became a roustabout on a Midwestern tent crew (carney if you will). I was unceremoniously shoved into a tent truck being sent to my first dusty heat shimmerin fairground.
The scene: a cab of a 1975 Ford F600 Flatbed truck pilled 12’ high with tent bags, with Conway Twitty wailing out of the metal dashboard, headed toward the Frankenmuth Michigan beer festival in a slow moving convoy on northbound US-23.
Vermin: Hi old hatefull carney how about we share the radio even steven? 50/50 Rock/Country.
Old Hateful cigar smokin’ carney: How bout you touch the radio and I break your fingers off and shove them up your ass? Sound Fair?
Vermin: Sounds good to me.
I had never listened to country music prior to that. I was forced to listen to it in the sweltering cab of a truck that smelt of sweat, Strohs Beer, and cheap stogies. The songs that came out of that dusty dashboard speaker took me away. It was created by people that had survived the depression and never even knew it happened because their poverty was no different regardless of what Wall Street was up to. They came to town after WW2 looking for jobs in the big cities like the GM Hydromatic plant in Ypsilanti Michigan. They sang their hearts out. They sang about love, loosing the life they knew, pain and glory, there was a richness and depth to their “3 chords and the truth” style. They believed if your ex didn’t have a restraining order on you it wasn’t real love to begin with. In those songs love would destroy you when it inevitably failed.
In a way their exodus from the hills was similar to my own. I was raised on a farm as a young lad and eventually moved to the big city That particular paradigm/value shift staggered me and has somehow kept me permanently out of sync with my surroundings.
White boy blues primer, do yourself a favor and download this stuff (don’t worry about royalties the artists are mostly dead and the rich cats at Sony/BMG wont even sue you over these songs just stay away from Gwen Stefani) grab a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon turn down the lights and get a good misery waller goin.
Ramblin’ Man-Hank Williams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9GuQofDLc
should be advriders theme song ignore lame video but listen to cool song)
Long Black Veil-Lefty Frizzell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k18gL76AU)
Big in Vegas- Buck Owens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-kOr...eature=related)
What have you got planned tonight Diana?-Merle Haggard
Faded Love-Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys possibly the best song ever written played by the best band ever assembled (he wrote this tune when he was a field hand at the age of 14)
Cold hard facts of life-Porter Wagoner (it has become politically incorrect, as of late, to stab your wife and her lover to death but it was a different place and time)
This is part of a subgenre of country music called psychobilly of which Porter was a master, his song “Rubber Room” is also tremendous.
Take an old cold tater and wait- Jimmy Dickens
Roses for momma/Teddy Bear-Red Sovine
Kansas city star- Roger Miller
This is basically po’ folks group therapy.
Be careful not to listen to them right in a row the intensity of ‘em could mess up your DNA. In the old days they had what you call “emotions” just wipe the saline solution off your cheek with your sleeve and blame allergies. This is before Pfizer, and Merck created capsules designed to obliterate emotions so they would not intrude on your ability to produce. Whatever happens, do not turn away from the television pill ads and notice that the only industry that is currently thriving are the pill pushers at CVS, RiteAid and Walgreens that are popping up on every corner. Produce so you can consume, consume so you can be happy, take a pill when it falls apart, then repeat one more time but faster, it is the American Dream.
I suppose if you where born and raised within spittin distance of a T.G.I.F. or a Bed, Bath and Beyond, then Kenny Chesney and his bland ass music will work fine but I need to keep it hard core down to the bone hurtin music. The only hurting Kenny Chesney does is when he wears his flip flops to the beach and stubs his toe on his beer cooler.
I like the pain it makes me feel alive. That is where Buck Owens and Merle Haggard come in.
Rant over
Where was I? Oh yeh, Unk gets done with his roadside respite and we head out on my personal favorite road of the trip. Go find it yourself (hint 11x3=sweet road north outta Ventura) tons of scenery, good corner radii for the speed and absolutely no cars.
Cool Road, Cool Company
Unks sphincter grows some teeth in the twisties and his footboards get scratched up anyway.
Up top of the pass into the interior I saw a beautiful desert flower.
Don’t get distracted by the flora.
Hey I smell a rat this is looking less and less like paradise and a lot more like hell.
Was Unk right?
BAKERSFIELD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv0nP...eature=related
So I figure, what paradise is this place called Bakersfield? Buck and Merles folks moved here from the dust bowl states of Texas and Oklahoma to pick fruit and vegetables. They could have gone to Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee or for that matter, the fruit laden capital of the blue haired set, Florida. But no, they chose Bakersfield, it must be beautiful! Unk said it was the armpit of California but certainly he had never been there. So we cruised over the mountains north of Ventura into the central valley, certainly this heat I am feeling is unusual and it will be nice and cool in Bakersfield. The closer we got to Bakersfield the hotter it got. My arms where so hot it felt like god was enjoying smoking me with a magnifying glass. Somebody had done something to really piss off the sun because it was on’ry today. At least the thought of Buck Owens chicken fried steak bolstered Ants spirits and made everything tolerable. We do roll past vast fields of produce I finally realized why the central valley is so important to America this is where it appears the vast majority of our produce is grown. I was not aware that it was grown in 100+ degree heat. Tractors should work fine here the surroundings are pancake flat and featureless. Smooth move Verm you have somehow managed to put the kybosh to the most beautiful coastline on earth for this, I AM A MORON. Perhaps I have made a mistake. So we roll up California 99 to Bakersfield. WHAT THE HELL? THIS IS PARADISE TO AN OKIE? Jeez I would hate to see Oklahoma in 1935.
A little about the Crystal Palace. I had read that these old country musicians Buck Owens and the Buckaroos played honky tonks for years all over the country and they wanted to settle down, so Buck decided rather than retire he would build the ultimate honky tonk/nightclub right here in his home town and incorporate the finest features of all the beer joints, honky tonks and nightclubs he ever played in and he called it the Crystal Palace. He played here most Friday nights. One Friday night a year or two ago he played a 45 minute set for his adoring fans, ate a famous Buck Owens crystal Palace lethal chicken fried steak and went home. He claimed he didn’t feel well and went upstairs and died of a heart attack.
What a grand edifice this must be! I imagine a great crystal dome with search lights piercing the desert night sky. I have a good deal of melancholy over having never seen him when he was alive. I have seen most of the greats, George (if you have to ask you wouldn’t understand), Waylon, Willie, David Allan Coe, Merle Haggard, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, JR Cash, Carl Perkins I even saw Ray Price at a blue hair warehouse down in Ohio but I never got out to Bakersfield to see Buck so it is with some sadness and guilt that I approach this musical mecca. Oh well I must pay homage and move along.
Surely there must be special exits off the freeway 3 or 4 lanes wide to handle the extra traffic to see one of the worlds greatest musician.
So we roll into a gas station on the south side of town to get gas and ask directions. The black top is sizzling like some one left the back door open to hell and my arms feel like they are being bitten by fire ants. I saunter into the building and start asking the patrons directions.
Vermin: Excuse me, Do you know where the Legendary Buck Owens Crystal Palace is?
Patron A: No Comprende inglese los siento
Vermin: Excrete me, Do you know where the Legendary Buck Owens Crystal Palace is?
Patron 2: tu motocycleta es muy basura
Vermin: Exhume me, Donde esta el palicio cristal de Buck Owens.?
Patron C: Who is Buck Owen?
Dollbaby: Cripe
Cue sound of breaking crystal and the cartoon sproinging sound of broken (minds) springs.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Was I in some twisted twilight Zone episode and no one bothered to tell me? No I didn’t see cameras.
I thought Buck Owens invented Bakersfield and vice versa
Finally this nice Arabic cashier went on the internet for me and found directions. We were about 2 miles away!
I was still excited but the fact that nobody had heard of him/it caused me to steel my resolve in preparation for no small amount of disappointment. By the time we pulled into the parking lot I was pretty much inconsolable, there was no Crystal anywhere it was pretty much just your average cheesy night club/gift shop. First the tooth fairy, then santa, and now this, please god let trickle down economics be true.
Where are the guys with the flags guiding us to our parking spot?
To depressed to be witty
At least I finally got to meet him, unfortunately he had previously joined the ranks of the dead bronze guys
A sweet custom job by Nudies Rodeo Tailor (gives me some good ideas for a cack car). This was back when country artists had class.
We where the only ones there. Even the lady that ran the souvenir counter seemed shocked that someone had showed up.
As I quietly, reverently reviewed the memorabilia scattered about the place the only known employee yapped loudly to her girlfriend on her cellphone about what a terd her boyfriend was.
We took the obligatory tour of the place and bought a bumpersticker. I gotta confess I got misty but hid it from the rels. I get overemotional about these old hillbillys because they remind me of my dads generation that came busting out of the south post ww2 full of piss and vinegar, one hand spinning their steering wheel speed knob (they stole offa their dads tractor), and the other on some hot babes torpedos, fishtailin and spitting gravel into Memphis or Nashville circa 1955. It was all yassir and no maam but you knew they had “da devil in dey drawers”.
One by one they are dropping, either burning out or rusting, either way they had a spirit to them that cannot be copied, every generation tries but the signal to noise ratio continues to deteriorate. The music has devolved into either bland jangly horseshit, gutteral demonic thrash or shallow macho chest thumpin rap either way I still listen to music that was made before I was born. The river is always cleaner closer to the source.
It is not just crass marketing acumen that has Snoop Dog doing a tribute to Cash (who has been dead several years) and has a video on Youtube singing with Willie. Snoop knows the real thing when he hears it.
I would also like to point out that early rappers watched Hee Haw and stole the idea of the droopy drawers from Dave "Stringbean" Akeman
Tupac got the idea of getting shot to death to highten your career from String.
The original notorious B.I.G.
You can’t get more gangsta than country, Merle Haggard was in San Quentin for armed robbery. Johnny Paycheck wrote the song “Old Violin” as he was headed to jail for shootin a feller in the head because the guy said he “sang good for a short guy”. David Allan Coe learned guitar from Charles Manson in prison (the Coe part may be false but Coe claims it is true).
I feel confident they won’t be forgotten, I looked on Drifters Ipod and it is chock full o’ JR Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Horton.
The straw that broke the Ants back was that the Buck Owens lethal chicken fried steak maker had not come in yet. There Ant was with her fork all drawed back and no place to stick it so we did a perfunctory tour of the buck owens crystal palace nudie suit and memorabilia museum and then mosied over to the IHOP out back to cool off and add a layer of plaque to her arteries.
At this juncture it was important for Ant and Unk to go to a radio shack and find a charger for their GPS so they could figure out how to get away from me and I had some unfinished business in a suburb of Bakersfield (Oildale) so we split up temporarily. Unk would like it stated that at this juncture that had the cigarette lighter I had cable tied to my dash hole would have worked he wouldn’t have had to buy a charger. Duuuuuh!
“I came here in looking for somethin'
I couldn't find anywhere else
Well, I don't want to be nobody,
Just want a chance to be myself."
(streets of bakersfield dwight yoakum/ buck owens)
Searching for “The Hag”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Haggard
Dollbaby still seemed game for whatever I wanted to pull off. It was pushing 4 oclock and the temperature had plummeted to a hundred deg. so I decided to search for the original converted boxcar that Merle Haggard grew up in before he got busted for armed robbery.
Mama Tried
“The first thing I remember knowing,
Was a lonesome whistle blowing,
And a young un's dream of growing up to ride;
On a freight train leaving town,
Not knowing where I'm bound,
No-one could change my mind but Mama tried.
One and only rebel child,
From a family, meek and mild:
My Mama seemed to know what lay in store.
Despite all my Sunday learning,
Towards the bad, I kept on turning.
'Til Mama couldn't hold me anymore.
And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried.”
(Cool autobiographical lick from The Hag)
I went lookin’ for a feeling more than an address, which worked out perfect because I never did know what the address was. I just knew he lived on Yosemite Street in Oildale which is the poor part of Bakersfield, which is the poor part of Kern county which is the poor part of California. I still don’t understand what them okies where thinking. So I pogo’d my no suspension havin’ self around northern Bakersfield looking for the joint. I saw “Trouts” bar were “The Bakersfield Sound” was fleshed out by Tommy Collins, Buck Owens and Merle back in the late 50’s early 60’s. Just so you know “The Bakersfield Sound” was sharp as a damn straight razor (It pretty much cut the throat of the smooth Nashville orchestra sound of the sixties). Usually featuring twin Fender Telecasters that where up front and center in the mix, with the twang knob spun past 11 and broke off. Buck and Merle did their own thing out there in B’field and it caught on pretty good cause that sound could cut through the wadded up empty packs of Pall Malls, work order tins and oil field dust on the dash of any pickup truck’s speaker as it hightailed its guilty ass home to momma at closing time.
I could have gone into Trouts as a salute to the masters but in a rare moment of good parenting I decided against it. Some of these things are better left to the imagination anyway as I had recently found out. I got in the vicinity of Merles boyhood boxcar and decided I needed a haircut and it would be cool to shoot the shit with some of the old timers that may have known Hag or Buck. Much to my dismay Okie Rays barber shop a block away was closed.
I eventually found Yosemite, which is only a couple blocks long. By now I have been so discouraged about seeking the shining light of my heroes I don’t expect much, and I wasn’t disappointed. We pulled into the concertina wire, pit bull tire chewed, burned out escort (Ford or flesh) capitol of the planet. I figure rather than fiddle faddle around this probable high crime area too long I would just ask a guy where was Merle’s boyhood boxcar.
I really didn’t want to get off the bike. This is a place where I clearly had no business but I had to try. I presume it was this shitty back in the 40s also but who knows? So this guy slithers across the street in front of me. Judging from his slender frame he is either a world class marathon runner or a devotee of Vitamin M. When he opened his mouth to reveal what appeared to be a row and a half of mildewed corn I had to vote Vitamin M.
The Scene: 5:30 PM Yosemite St. Oildale California June 2008
Vermin: Pardon me your majesty. Do you happen to know which Box is the one that the best singer/songwriter ever born was raised? You know Merle Haggard?
Vitamin M: …..
Vermin: You know, the one that got outta San Quentin in 1960.
Vitamin M: …..snif birtx
Vermin: You know, with a voice as sweet as a new awlins tenor sax bawlin at midnight?
Vitamin M:…….
Verm: You know, the only singer that can make sweet thang cry?
Vitamin M:…….
Verm: You know, theeeee Haaaaaag?
Vitamin M: (Wild darting eyes) “I don't know what yur talkin' about mang” (cue Road Runner pitcheeeeww cartoon leaving noise as he peels out and leaves nothing but tracks across the dusty road)
Dollbaby: Cripe
This little moronic sojourn into the past was a failure to a degree but it helped highlight, in my mind, that there ain’t no future in history but non the less, the savage beating that my preconceptions took stung and left me feeling blue.
Enough of this semi dangerous tomfoolery, it was time to make tracks, we had to meet Ant and Unk up the road apiece so I pointed my hi viz fuselage north on the slab and rolled on the throttle.
Rollin’ down the freeway my internal dialogue was a full on harangue. The Buddhist call this dialogue “the monkey mind” well my monkey mind had a brand new tire in its cage and was whippin’ it around, shrieking and flingin’ ape shit at the spectators (don’t get any on ya).
Painful Internal Dialogue Rant
I try to sort through the mess as to how much is personal and how much of my angst really is justified by the state of the world as it pertains to me. Working in a domestic industry that had no apparent plan for high fuel cost doesn’t improve my “tude”. But yet somehow the big shooters do quite well, win, loose or draw.
I will use a true story to sum up my view of this morass:
A lady I worked with had a barn full of horses and a rat problem. She found out my dad had a heckfire four legged rat killin’ machine. Actually it would try to kill anything with DNA but bein’ 14lbs, (soaking wet with varmint blood) all it could kill was rats (it pretty much just perforated horses, possum, coons, irish setters, nieces, nephews, UPS drivers, truck bumpers and wiring harnesses).
We pulled up to the barn with the rat killin dog justa vibratin’ with excitement. He knew something needed killin’ but the fact was we had forgot to bring Frankie the ferret (a gift from carl with a K) to chase the rats out of their holes. It twernt much of a killin’. The rats lowtailed it subterranean asap and the dog commenced to pacing around, barkin’ and carryin’ on. He was all dressed up with nowhere to go and more than a little pissed. Being an astute rational engineer type I looked around the barn and found several morbidly obese cats laying around up on the rafters and on the feed bags, swishin’ their tails and looking bored. I continued scanning and saw, on the ground, a big hubcap piled high with cat food.
I immediately ascertained that the barn didn’t have a rat problem it had a cat food problem. I figure we have a cat food problem at the highest levels of leadership in this country.
Rant over
A hour and a half north of Bakersfield we reunited with Ant and Unk at a motel and relaxed and had a couple of adult beverages. Then for some unknown reason, as I was trying to wrestle myself out of my depression era funk, Unk repeatedly tried to highlight what an abject failure my pursuit of hillbilly glory had been. It confused me as to why he would kick a vermin when he was down. After I agreed several times that I stank, my plan stank, my entire operation stank, Bakersfield stank, and my bike stank, Ant came to my defense and told him to lay off. Thanks Ant. I think the motivation was that in his world planning and its resultant success is the only alternative. In my world a plan that has failed miserably but taught me something about myself or the world around me still ranks as a success. In my routine I run vague plans that are liable to tank and then enjoy the challenge that a recovery mandates, it keeps me on my toes. That’s how I roll.
It is all part of the Unk loosening up program. He was in my world now.
Ant and Unk have been a pleasure all along and I am glad that we are still together. This is Ants first semi long trip with Unk and she is loving it thoroughly. It is nice to see a couple get along well after 30 years and, ideally, gives me a glimpse into my future once the kids leave home.
Good night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
or "The rise and fall of country and western civilzation"
Woke up in a hotel on Venice beach. Ate the Continental breakfast shooting the breeze with some Germans (ich bin ein dummer amerikaner jah). Unk, Ant, Dollbaby and myself seem fairly rudderless at this point and I will be damned if I will be accused of having a plan.
Packed 'em up
5 Kilograms of excrement
2 Kilogram bag
I originally had planned to head up the angels crest road and all these other twisties north and east of Los Angeles I had read about in cycle magazines since I was a pup but Unk had spent a lot of time polishing the bottom of his floorboards and didn’t want to scratch them up on curvy roads so we headed west toward Malibu. I actually think he may have been trying to ditch me for a little quality time with ant but I didn’t take the hint. In reality we live so far away from our loved ones I wanted Dollbaby to get to know her Ant and Unk up close and personal rather than in a mass gathering every other year, there are plenty of curvy roads ahead so I figure the trade is well worth it.
Leaving town
Malibu beach bums still exist. Livin la vida loca in the camper on the beach. Hmmmmm.
We cruised west a little and pulled into a gas station, in Malibu, to get some more go juice and while I was filling cack up a 60 something woman in a new Mercedes pulled up and started shooting the breeze with Dollbaby. Doll told the lady what we were all about. The lady was startled and grinned from ear to ear as I am sure she probably couldn’t imagine such a cool trip. As the lady turned to leave I thought she started misting up a little. Maybe her dad was too busy to take her on trips, maybe he did take her and he was gone on the biggest trip of all at the moment. Either way I knew we were in the sweet spot of life if we had that effect on a rich old lady in Malibu.
My Pacific Coast on the Pacific Coast
At this point we light up the bikes and cruise west into Ventura. I didn’t see any town as we were on the state highway. We pulled over in a construction turnoff to get our wits about us.
Miscellaneous agriculture off the coast by Oxnard (hi roboter)
I was entirely unaffected by L.A.
So I see this whole thing as a feel good summer blockbuster like “Little Miss Sunshine” but with a more rubbishy littery feel. The demographics will be great, wide range. It’ll kill on both coasts and the middle. Have your people git with mine.
Vermin=Nicholas Cage
Dollbaby=Miley Cyrus
Ant=Jessica Simpson
Unk=Montgomery Burns
Intro: Long, sweeping, moving, montage of two renegade bikes rolling down the pacific coast highway with the song Born to Be Mild by the band Steppenshit, go to a medium shot as they pull into a gravel construction pulloff
Close up on the Verm
Verm: Hain’t this purdy
Ant: Why are we stopping?
Unk: I have to pee.
Verm: Hey where did my maglight go?
Doll: Back there (waving her hand vaguely backwards toward LA)
Verm: Daaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmit
Unk: I have to pee.
Verm: Where are we? (looking at trucker atlas)
Ant: Why don’t we use our GPS? (Snotty rich Ant speak for my stuff is better than yours) Dang the batteries are dead (futily shaking the unit).
Verm: (smiles a non battery needin smile) Why don’t we use my trucker atlas?
Ant: I am hungry
Verm: They make a mean chicken fried steak at Buck Owens Crystal Palace in Bakersfield that killed ‘im deader’n a doornail about a year ago. ( Imagine the glory of creating a delicacy so delicious it is lethal. It is like a hillbilly version of them poisonous Japanese puffer fish).
Unk: Bakersfield is heinous the coast is beautiful. I have to pee.
Doll: Are we there yet?
Verm: Where?
Dollbaby: Why don’t you use that porta potti? (she points to the porta john, the only visible building anywhere, 75 feet across the road)
Unk: Oh
(Cue ominous important decision makin music)
Ant: I gotta have that chicken fried steak.
Verm: (Singing way out of tune, I believe the word is caterwauling, sounding not unlike the uvulating shrieking of some mourning Bedouins)
“you don’t know me but you don’t like me
you could care less how I feel
how many of you that sit and judge me
ever walked the streets of Bakersfield”
Doll: Cripe
And this is how it came to pass that we missed the entire pacific coast of and chose Bakersfield as our destination.
Old School Country Music Rant
(you type A personality types can go get a cup of coffee you will not understand this part)
Musically I started out normally enough with my Monkees records and my Beatles lunch box, this quite naturally led to the Rolling Stones and Zepellin. I was pretty much an archetypical couch layin long hair snot nosed punk. So far, So good. then on June 1st 1977 I became a roustabout on a Midwestern tent crew (carney if you will). I was unceremoniously shoved into a tent truck being sent to my first dusty heat shimmerin fairground.
The scene: a cab of a 1975 Ford F600 Flatbed truck pilled 12’ high with tent bags, with Conway Twitty wailing out of the metal dashboard, headed toward the Frankenmuth Michigan beer festival in a slow moving convoy on northbound US-23.
Vermin: Hi old hatefull carney how about we share the radio even steven? 50/50 Rock/Country.
Old Hateful cigar smokin’ carney: How bout you touch the radio and I break your fingers off and shove them up your ass? Sound Fair?
Vermin: Sounds good to me.
I had never listened to country music prior to that. I was forced to listen to it in the sweltering cab of a truck that smelt of sweat, Strohs Beer, and cheap stogies. The songs that came out of that dusty dashboard speaker took me away. It was created by people that had survived the depression and never even knew it happened because their poverty was no different regardless of what Wall Street was up to. They came to town after WW2 looking for jobs in the big cities like the GM Hydromatic plant in Ypsilanti Michigan. They sang their hearts out. They sang about love, loosing the life they knew, pain and glory, there was a richness and depth to their “3 chords and the truth” style. They believed if your ex didn’t have a restraining order on you it wasn’t real love to begin with. In those songs love would destroy you when it inevitably failed.
In a way their exodus from the hills was similar to my own. I was raised on a farm as a young lad and eventually moved to the big city That particular paradigm/value shift staggered me and has somehow kept me permanently out of sync with my surroundings.
White boy blues primer, do yourself a favor and download this stuff (don’t worry about royalties the artists are mostly dead and the rich cats at Sony/BMG wont even sue you over these songs just stay away from Gwen Stefani) grab a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon turn down the lights and get a good misery waller goin.
Ramblin’ Man-Hank Williams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9GuQofDLc
should be advriders theme song ignore lame video but listen to cool song)
Long Black Veil-Lefty Frizzell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k18gL76AU)
Big in Vegas- Buck Owens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-kOr...eature=related)
What have you got planned tonight Diana?-Merle Haggard
Faded Love-Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys possibly the best song ever written played by the best band ever assembled (he wrote this tune when he was a field hand at the age of 14)
Cold hard facts of life-Porter Wagoner (it has become politically incorrect, as of late, to stab your wife and her lover to death but it was a different place and time)
This is part of a subgenre of country music called psychobilly of which Porter was a master, his song “Rubber Room” is also tremendous.
Take an old cold tater and wait- Jimmy Dickens
Roses for momma/Teddy Bear-Red Sovine
Kansas city star- Roger Miller
This is basically po’ folks group therapy.
Be careful not to listen to them right in a row the intensity of ‘em could mess up your DNA. In the old days they had what you call “emotions” just wipe the saline solution off your cheek with your sleeve and blame allergies. This is before Pfizer, and Merck created capsules designed to obliterate emotions so they would not intrude on your ability to produce. Whatever happens, do not turn away from the television pill ads and notice that the only industry that is currently thriving are the pill pushers at CVS, RiteAid and Walgreens that are popping up on every corner. Produce so you can consume, consume so you can be happy, take a pill when it falls apart, then repeat one more time but faster, it is the American Dream.
I suppose if you where born and raised within spittin distance of a T.G.I.F. or a Bed, Bath and Beyond, then Kenny Chesney and his bland ass music will work fine but I need to keep it hard core down to the bone hurtin music. The only hurting Kenny Chesney does is when he wears his flip flops to the beach and stubs his toe on his beer cooler.
I like the pain it makes me feel alive. That is where Buck Owens and Merle Haggard come in.
Rant over
Where was I? Oh yeh, Unk gets done with his roadside respite and we head out on my personal favorite road of the trip. Go find it yourself (hint 11x3=sweet road north outta Ventura) tons of scenery, good corner radii for the speed and absolutely no cars.
Cool Road, Cool Company
Unks sphincter grows some teeth in the twisties and his footboards get scratched up anyway.
Up top of the pass into the interior I saw a beautiful desert flower.
Don’t get distracted by the flora.
Hey I smell a rat this is looking less and less like paradise and a lot more like hell.
Was Unk right?
BAKERSFIELD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv0nP...eature=related
So I figure, what paradise is this place called Bakersfield? Buck and Merles folks moved here from the dust bowl states of Texas and Oklahoma to pick fruit and vegetables. They could have gone to Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee or for that matter, the fruit laden capital of the blue haired set, Florida. But no, they chose Bakersfield, it must be beautiful! Unk said it was the armpit of California but certainly he had never been there. So we cruised over the mountains north of Ventura into the central valley, certainly this heat I am feeling is unusual and it will be nice and cool in Bakersfield. The closer we got to Bakersfield the hotter it got. My arms where so hot it felt like god was enjoying smoking me with a magnifying glass. Somebody had done something to really piss off the sun because it was on’ry today. At least the thought of Buck Owens chicken fried steak bolstered Ants spirits and made everything tolerable. We do roll past vast fields of produce I finally realized why the central valley is so important to America this is where it appears the vast majority of our produce is grown. I was not aware that it was grown in 100+ degree heat. Tractors should work fine here the surroundings are pancake flat and featureless. Smooth move Verm you have somehow managed to put the kybosh to the most beautiful coastline on earth for this, I AM A MORON. Perhaps I have made a mistake. So we roll up California 99 to Bakersfield. WHAT THE HELL? THIS IS PARADISE TO AN OKIE? Jeez I would hate to see Oklahoma in 1935.
A little about the Crystal Palace. I had read that these old country musicians Buck Owens and the Buckaroos played honky tonks for years all over the country and they wanted to settle down, so Buck decided rather than retire he would build the ultimate honky tonk/nightclub right here in his home town and incorporate the finest features of all the beer joints, honky tonks and nightclubs he ever played in and he called it the Crystal Palace. He played here most Friday nights. One Friday night a year or two ago he played a 45 minute set for his adoring fans, ate a famous Buck Owens crystal Palace lethal chicken fried steak and went home. He claimed he didn’t feel well and went upstairs and died of a heart attack.
What a grand edifice this must be! I imagine a great crystal dome with search lights piercing the desert night sky. I have a good deal of melancholy over having never seen him when he was alive. I have seen most of the greats, George (if you have to ask you wouldn’t understand), Waylon, Willie, David Allan Coe, Merle Haggard, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, JR Cash, Carl Perkins I even saw Ray Price at a blue hair warehouse down in Ohio but I never got out to Bakersfield to see Buck so it is with some sadness and guilt that I approach this musical mecca. Oh well I must pay homage and move along.
Surely there must be special exits off the freeway 3 or 4 lanes wide to handle the extra traffic to see one of the worlds greatest musician.
So we roll into a gas station on the south side of town to get gas and ask directions. The black top is sizzling like some one left the back door open to hell and my arms feel like they are being bitten by fire ants. I saunter into the building and start asking the patrons directions.
Vermin: Excuse me, Do you know where the Legendary Buck Owens Crystal Palace is?
Patron A: No Comprende inglese los siento
Vermin: Excrete me, Do you know where the Legendary Buck Owens Crystal Palace is?
Patron 2: tu motocycleta es muy basura
Vermin: Exhume me, Donde esta el palicio cristal de Buck Owens.?
Patron C: Who is Buck Owen?
Dollbaby: Cripe
Cue sound of breaking crystal and the cartoon sproinging sound of broken (minds) springs.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Was I in some twisted twilight Zone episode and no one bothered to tell me? No I didn’t see cameras.
I thought Buck Owens invented Bakersfield and vice versa
Finally this nice Arabic cashier went on the internet for me and found directions. We were about 2 miles away!
I was still excited but the fact that nobody had heard of him/it caused me to steel my resolve in preparation for no small amount of disappointment. By the time we pulled into the parking lot I was pretty much inconsolable, there was no Crystal anywhere it was pretty much just your average cheesy night club/gift shop. First the tooth fairy, then santa, and now this, please god let trickle down economics be true.
Where are the guys with the flags guiding us to our parking spot?
To depressed to be witty
At least I finally got to meet him, unfortunately he had previously joined the ranks of the dead bronze guys
A sweet custom job by Nudies Rodeo Tailor (gives me some good ideas for a cack car). This was back when country artists had class.
We where the only ones there. Even the lady that ran the souvenir counter seemed shocked that someone had showed up.
As I quietly, reverently reviewed the memorabilia scattered about the place the only known employee yapped loudly to her girlfriend on her cellphone about what a terd her boyfriend was.
We took the obligatory tour of the place and bought a bumpersticker. I gotta confess I got misty but hid it from the rels. I get overemotional about these old hillbillys because they remind me of my dads generation that came busting out of the south post ww2 full of piss and vinegar, one hand spinning their steering wheel speed knob (they stole offa their dads tractor), and the other on some hot babes torpedos, fishtailin and spitting gravel into Memphis or Nashville circa 1955. It was all yassir and no maam but you knew they had “da devil in dey drawers”.
One by one they are dropping, either burning out or rusting, either way they had a spirit to them that cannot be copied, every generation tries but the signal to noise ratio continues to deteriorate. The music has devolved into either bland jangly horseshit, gutteral demonic thrash or shallow macho chest thumpin rap either way I still listen to music that was made before I was born. The river is always cleaner closer to the source.
It is not just crass marketing acumen that has Snoop Dog doing a tribute to Cash (who has been dead several years) and has a video on Youtube singing with Willie. Snoop knows the real thing when he hears it.
I would also like to point out that early rappers watched Hee Haw and stole the idea of the droopy drawers from Dave "Stringbean" Akeman
Tupac got the idea of getting shot to death to highten your career from String.
The original notorious B.I.G.
You can’t get more gangsta than country, Merle Haggard was in San Quentin for armed robbery. Johnny Paycheck wrote the song “Old Violin” as he was headed to jail for shootin a feller in the head because the guy said he “sang good for a short guy”. David Allan Coe learned guitar from Charles Manson in prison (the Coe part may be false but Coe claims it is true).
I feel confident they won’t be forgotten, I looked on Drifters Ipod and it is chock full o’ JR Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Horton.
The straw that broke the Ants back was that the Buck Owens lethal chicken fried steak maker had not come in yet. There Ant was with her fork all drawed back and no place to stick it so we did a perfunctory tour of the buck owens crystal palace nudie suit and memorabilia museum and then mosied over to the IHOP out back to cool off and add a layer of plaque to her arteries.
At this juncture it was important for Ant and Unk to go to a radio shack and find a charger for their GPS so they could figure out how to get away from me and I had some unfinished business in a suburb of Bakersfield (Oildale) so we split up temporarily. Unk would like it stated that at this juncture that had the cigarette lighter I had cable tied to my dash hole would have worked he wouldn’t have had to buy a charger. Duuuuuh!
“I came here in looking for somethin'
I couldn't find anywhere else
Well, I don't want to be nobody,
Just want a chance to be myself."
(streets of bakersfield dwight yoakum/ buck owens)
Searching for “The Hag”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Haggard
Dollbaby still seemed game for whatever I wanted to pull off. It was pushing 4 oclock and the temperature had plummeted to a hundred deg. so I decided to search for the original converted boxcar that Merle Haggard grew up in before he got busted for armed robbery.
Mama Tried
“The first thing I remember knowing,
Was a lonesome whistle blowing,
And a young un's dream of growing up to ride;
On a freight train leaving town,
Not knowing where I'm bound,
No-one could change my mind but Mama tried.
One and only rebel child,
From a family, meek and mild:
My Mama seemed to know what lay in store.
Despite all my Sunday learning,
Towards the bad, I kept on turning.
'Til Mama couldn't hold me anymore.
And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried.”
(Cool autobiographical lick from The Hag)
I went lookin’ for a feeling more than an address, which worked out perfect because I never did know what the address was. I just knew he lived on Yosemite Street in Oildale which is the poor part of Bakersfield, which is the poor part of Kern county which is the poor part of California. I still don’t understand what them okies where thinking. So I pogo’d my no suspension havin’ self around northern Bakersfield looking for the joint. I saw “Trouts” bar were “The Bakersfield Sound” was fleshed out by Tommy Collins, Buck Owens and Merle back in the late 50’s early 60’s. Just so you know “The Bakersfield Sound” was sharp as a damn straight razor (It pretty much cut the throat of the smooth Nashville orchestra sound of the sixties). Usually featuring twin Fender Telecasters that where up front and center in the mix, with the twang knob spun past 11 and broke off. Buck and Merle did their own thing out there in B’field and it caught on pretty good cause that sound could cut through the wadded up empty packs of Pall Malls, work order tins and oil field dust on the dash of any pickup truck’s speaker as it hightailed its guilty ass home to momma at closing time.
I could have gone into Trouts as a salute to the masters but in a rare moment of good parenting I decided against it. Some of these things are better left to the imagination anyway as I had recently found out. I got in the vicinity of Merles boyhood boxcar and decided I needed a haircut and it would be cool to shoot the shit with some of the old timers that may have known Hag or Buck. Much to my dismay Okie Rays barber shop a block away was closed.
I eventually found Yosemite, which is only a couple blocks long. By now I have been so discouraged about seeking the shining light of my heroes I don’t expect much, and I wasn’t disappointed. We pulled into the concertina wire, pit bull tire chewed, burned out escort (Ford or flesh) capitol of the planet. I figure rather than fiddle faddle around this probable high crime area too long I would just ask a guy where was Merle’s boyhood boxcar.
I really didn’t want to get off the bike. This is a place where I clearly had no business but I had to try. I presume it was this shitty back in the 40s also but who knows? So this guy slithers across the street in front of me. Judging from his slender frame he is either a world class marathon runner or a devotee of Vitamin M. When he opened his mouth to reveal what appeared to be a row and a half of mildewed corn I had to vote Vitamin M.
The Scene: 5:30 PM Yosemite St. Oildale California June 2008
Vermin: Pardon me your majesty. Do you happen to know which Box is the one that the best singer/songwriter ever born was raised? You know Merle Haggard?
Vitamin M: …..
Vermin: You know, the one that got outta San Quentin in 1960.
Vitamin M: …..snif birtx
Vermin: You know, with a voice as sweet as a new awlins tenor sax bawlin at midnight?
Vitamin M:…….
Verm: You know, the only singer that can make sweet thang cry?
Vitamin M:…….
Verm: You know, theeeee Haaaaaag?
Vitamin M: (Wild darting eyes) “I don't know what yur talkin' about mang” (cue Road Runner pitcheeeeww cartoon leaving noise as he peels out and leaves nothing but tracks across the dusty road)
Dollbaby: Cripe
This little moronic sojourn into the past was a failure to a degree but it helped highlight, in my mind, that there ain’t no future in history but non the less, the savage beating that my preconceptions took stung and left me feeling blue.
Enough of this semi dangerous tomfoolery, it was time to make tracks, we had to meet Ant and Unk up the road apiece so I pointed my hi viz fuselage north on the slab and rolled on the throttle.
Rollin’ down the freeway my internal dialogue was a full on harangue. The Buddhist call this dialogue “the monkey mind” well my monkey mind had a brand new tire in its cage and was whippin’ it around, shrieking and flingin’ ape shit at the spectators (don’t get any on ya).
Painful Internal Dialogue Rant
I try to sort through the mess as to how much is personal and how much of my angst really is justified by the state of the world as it pertains to me. Working in a domestic industry that had no apparent plan for high fuel cost doesn’t improve my “tude”. But yet somehow the big shooters do quite well, win, loose or draw.
I will use a true story to sum up my view of this morass:
A lady I worked with had a barn full of horses and a rat problem. She found out my dad had a heckfire four legged rat killin’ machine. Actually it would try to kill anything with DNA but bein’ 14lbs, (soaking wet with varmint blood) all it could kill was rats (it pretty much just perforated horses, possum, coons, irish setters, nieces, nephews, UPS drivers, truck bumpers and wiring harnesses).
We pulled up to the barn with the rat killin dog justa vibratin’ with excitement. He knew something needed killin’ but the fact was we had forgot to bring Frankie the ferret (a gift from carl with a K) to chase the rats out of their holes. It twernt much of a killin’. The rats lowtailed it subterranean asap and the dog commenced to pacing around, barkin’ and carryin’ on. He was all dressed up with nowhere to go and more than a little pissed. Being an astute rational engineer type I looked around the barn and found several morbidly obese cats laying around up on the rafters and on the feed bags, swishin’ their tails and looking bored. I continued scanning and saw, on the ground, a big hubcap piled high with cat food.
I immediately ascertained that the barn didn’t have a rat problem it had a cat food problem. I figure we have a cat food problem at the highest levels of leadership in this country.
Rant over
A hour and a half north of Bakersfield we reunited with Ant and Unk at a motel and relaxed and had a couple of adult beverages. Then for some unknown reason, as I was trying to wrestle myself out of my depression era funk, Unk repeatedly tried to highlight what an abject failure my pursuit of hillbilly glory had been. It confused me as to why he would kick a vermin when he was down. After I agreed several times that I stank, my plan stank, my entire operation stank, Bakersfield stank, and my bike stank, Ant came to my defense and told him to lay off. Thanks Ant. I think the motivation was that in his world planning and its resultant success is the only alternative. In my world a plan that has failed miserably but taught me something about myself or the world around me still ranks as a success. In my routine I run vague plans that are liable to tank and then enjoy the challenge that a recovery mandates, it keeps me on my toes. That’s how I roll.
It is all part of the Unk loosening up program. He was in my world now.
Ant and Unk have been a pleasure all along and I am glad that we are still together. This is Ants first semi long trip with Unk and she is loving it thoroughly. It is nice to see a couple get along well after 30 years and, ideally, gives me a glimpse into my future once the kids leave home.
Good night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Massive wood
We wake up southwest of Sequoia National Park, I more or less leave my disappointments of the prior day on a low idle and we head toward the big sticks to do some righteous mototourism. I do a quick inventory of the situation at hand and come up with a 1.75 thumbs up rating.
We toss some bagels down our grocery grommets and roll east into the park.
Doll finds some pink duct tape to improve my aerodynamics and fix my sawzall work. The bike is improved with a womans touch.
Once again I give Kudos to the national park system. They are places that are fairly hospitable to a vast array of people from modern buff teen hikers to purple legged diabetics in motorhomes, all Americans can enjoy them to some degree, so why aren’t we? Rather than spend your time at work on the internet looking at pictures of these places why don’t you go? No matter how little/much you work someone else will get rich and you won’t so relax and go enjoy the scenery. It will definitely enrichen you, guaranteed.
Once again there is tons of South Americans, Europeans and miscellanious Asians strolling around but dang few Americans. They are probably busy working overtime saving up for just the right bike, gps, saddle bags, blue tooth, crash bars, audio mixer/wahatever. Work harder, faster I am sure that next bike will be the one to make you happy.
The road up to the big sticks is real curvy and sweet and we spend the first half of the day slow cruising up the side of the mountain.
Milwaukee Mucous
The prominent protuberance on top of this ridge is Moro rock.
Snakin around and getting closer
Doll and Verm standing on top of the world (taken by a dude from Brazilia)
Apparently a natural part of life cycle of the grand trees is commence to conflagratin whenever I go on Vacation hence the scenery is largely concealed by smoke. The website at Orbitz gives off tree ignitin’ phermones whenever I stoke up my credit card for any travel plans. At least this time I get to see the trees. In 2000 I rode all the way from Detroit to Arizona and back and didn’t see Pikes Peak, Mesa Verde or any other excellent stuff onnaconna this phenomenon
View from the top of Moro
Vermin botology lesson
So we head into the big trees. As big as they are they have a fairly narrow range of habitat they can prosper in and the vast majority of it is here in the Sierra Something or Other Mountain range. Stuff happens to them and then other stuff happens and then they become grand. The park was founded by a guy that tried to cut them down and got discouraged and decided they where too grand to cut down. I think succeeding at all cost is over rated, this guy was a failure as a lumberjack (thank god) and we are all richer for it. So I guess in a sense if it weren’t for slackers in the lumber industry this beautiful park wouldn’t exist. Just think what wonderous natural phenomenom might occur if you do a cruddy job on your next powerpoint presentation and quit and go on vacation. You might get to know your world and your family.
Obligatory pictures of lumber.
We saunter around ooooing and aaaaahing for a couple of hours and then head back down the hill. I am out in front using the Jake Brake on some steep curvy down hills doing the braaaaaaatbwaaaaaabrat routine and then it occurs to me just to douse the damn motor and use the grade to my advantage. I went from 6000 feet to near sea level with my knees in the breeze with no sound but the wind and the western sizzlin of my hot tires on the street. Swoopin free and easy like a psychodelic Pterodactyl leaving a dealer maintained factory approved running Harley Heritage softail classic in my dust.
I had one of my all time top motorcycle rides with the motor off. Dig that you hundert and fiddy horsepower power hungry freaks.
At the bottom of the mountain we come to a T in the road that has a fruit stand. We sit there in the shade recalibrating. I am not entirely sure what day of the week it is (although I am sure Ant would have told me). I get the feeling that there has been to much dilly dallying and I should make some northern tracks. There is some cordial shit shot with Ant and Unk.
In the mean time a lady drove her muy expensive jap (can a person still say jap?) car up on a stump in front of us in the parking lot raising the left front tire clean off the ground. They had to call a tow truck to dislodge it and move it away. I wish I could record the accident revelation session with her high falutin husband.
Wife: Honey I have some bad news
Husband: yes………….
Wife: I was in an accident.
Husband: How is the car, (logically knowing if she was bad hurt she wouldn’t be on the phone)? I mean you? I mean are? I mean how car you are? I mean cow are you doing?(he tries to stutter his way out of the gaffe).
Wife: (Understanding his temporary mistake is just the catalyst she needed for a chance to quit playing defense and go on the offensive) You never loved me you only care about your damn car.
Husband: (dejectedly realizing he cannot defend himself against her womanly wiles) Do you want me to come get you?
Wife: Whatever, ass. (wife smiles to herself at her deft handling of a dicey situation).
Game, Set, Match Wife
I made that whole thing up in my mind I am sure it would never have happened that way.
We mutually decide that Unk and Ant have had as much of me as is practical and I get a nagging feeling that I still have 3400 miles to go so Unk heads south and I throw my skeletal remains back onto the bike and peel off to the north.
Notice the subtle arrow pointing toward my slowmoving tractor triangle. It is subtly placed there to create a sense of forboding.
Bad Dad
It is still hotter than blazes but I don’t really care. Dollbaby, never one to complain, seems fairly happy and excited. Cack is thirsty for more Dinosaur squeezins. As I cruised through suburban Fresno all the gas stations where on the wrong side of the road or I didn’t see them till too late or I was in the wrong lane. One thing led to another and I ended up in the ghetto/barrio and still not found either a big fat north/south freeway or a gas station. We finally lurch into a real seedy bullet proof plexiglass petrol station as the soundtrack to Armeggedon approaches from behind me. An espanik feller on an absolutely tricked out bagger hog rolls in with twin 6x9 speakers blasting (mounted in the bags) that deep ghetto bass that makes soccer moms lock their doors. Every time the beat hits bottom my poindexter crime victim style glasses vibrate and make me sneeze. A bunch of African American fellers ridin on DUBs in a 1995 Chevy Blazer pull over to the Harley guy and have a brief confab about how they are gonna tie ropes to my legs and pull me into two separate pieces (while somehow magicly conversing over 149,237.5 decible music) and then take my atm card and spend my money imprudently. Never mind my daughter. I know all this for a fact because I watch COPS and I have seen movies about this type of thing. In the meantime a wino comes over and starts blabbering absolute gibberish and really anxiously wanting a response. My paranometer was flashing MAX. My excel spreadsheet threat matrix had nothing but red blinking squares. I am eyeing the bear mace as the heavily gang tattooed rolling beatbox guy sauntered toward me fumbling in his drawers for his 9mm. As he got into point blank range his right hand shot out of his pocket and he handed me his business card and said “yo if you ever need any custom paint or fiberglass work give me a call” he looked at my bike, smiled and left with his homeys in tow.
Potentially devisive Preconception rant
Whenever I do my occasional reality checks on the state of affairs of the world I run it through my personal experience filter.
List of ethnic groups that have personally in any way damaged me.
1) Mexicans=0
2) African Americans=0 (they seem to be a much greater threat to each other)
3) Middle aged white men= bastards involved themselves in speculation on the mortgage markets and sold a bunch of semi worthless notes to large wall street unregulated semi worthless guys whose malfeasance caused the equity in my house (sweat of my hard working brow/life savings) to vaporize. Of course other middle aged white guys in politics will further bleed me to make sure the semiworthless notes are backed up with my tax money so the heads of the banks do not receive any general discomfort because of their greed. I am starting to feel like the slow buffalo in those National Geographic specials on how charming wolves are. I hope before they die they look down out of their Gulfstream jets at the vast land beneath them and have a moment of understanding about how their greed has affected peoples lives and then beg for forgiveness. The free market system is only free for a select few, you and me gotta pay. Whatever you do don’t turn off the TV and pay attention and make these absolute pieces of shit pay the cost to be the boss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo
4) Inuit=0
5) Trinidad/Tobagans=0
6) Liberals=made me pay my .23 Cent late fee on “Old Yeller” from the library circa 1965 and made sure my youthful coke bottle thick poindexter glasses where paid for from insurance.
I figure Warren Buffet recently read the passage in the book of Mathew about rich guys having the same odds getting into heaven as a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle that is why he is busy handing over his cash to charity.
Gods Only Party has a two pronged approach to the thorny rich guy issue.
1) try to get the bible edited to have the word needle changed to St. louis arch.
2) Secretly try to use genetic modification to breed futuristic microscopic camels
Potentially devisive Rant over
I had to make a decision at this point. Do I head back to the coast, get tangled in another metropolitan area (san fran) and add another several hundred totally scenic miles to my trip or semi leasurely head north up the smoke covered flat central valley on the freeway?
Stockton Ho!
============================================================
We toss some bagels down our grocery grommets and roll east into the park.
Doll finds some pink duct tape to improve my aerodynamics and fix my sawzall work. The bike is improved with a womans touch.
Once again I give Kudos to the national park system. They are places that are fairly hospitable to a vast array of people from modern buff teen hikers to purple legged diabetics in motorhomes, all Americans can enjoy them to some degree, so why aren’t we? Rather than spend your time at work on the internet looking at pictures of these places why don’t you go? No matter how little/much you work someone else will get rich and you won’t so relax and go enjoy the scenery. It will definitely enrichen you, guaranteed.
Once again there is tons of South Americans, Europeans and miscellanious Asians strolling around but dang few Americans. They are probably busy working overtime saving up for just the right bike, gps, saddle bags, blue tooth, crash bars, audio mixer/wahatever. Work harder, faster I am sure that next bike will be the one to make you happy.
The road up to the big sticks is real curvy and sweet and we spend the first half of the day slow cruising up the side of the mountain.
Milwaukee Mucous
The prominent protuberance on top of this ridge is Moro rock.
Snakin around and getting closer
Doll and Verm standing on top of the world (taken by a dude from Brazilia)
Apparently a natural part of life cycle of the grand trees is commence to conflagratin whenever I go on Vacation hence the scenery is largely concealed by smoke. The website at Orbitz gives off tree ignitin’ phermones whenever I stoke up my credit card for any travel plans. At least this time I get to see the trees. In 2000 I rode all the way from Detroit to Arizona and back and didn’t see Pikes Peak, Mesa Verde or any other excellent stuff onnaconna this phenomenon
View from the top of Moro
Vermin botology lesson
So we head into the big trees. As big as they are they have a fairly narrow range of habitat they can prosper in and the vast majority of it is here in the Sierra Something or Other Mountain range. Stuff happens to them and then other stuff happens and then they become grand. The park was founded by a guy that tried to cut them down and got discouraged and decided they where too grand to cut down. I think succeeding at all cost is over rated, this guy was a failure as a lumberjack (thank god) and we are all richer for it. So I guess in a sense if it weren’t for slackers in the lumber industry this beautiful park wouldn’t exist. Just think what wonderous natural phenomenom might occur if you do a cruddy job on your next powerpoint presentation and quit and go on vacation. You might get to know your world and your family.
Obligatory pictures of lumber.
We saunter around ooooing and aaaaahing for a couple of hours and then head back down the hill. I am out in front using the Jake Brake on some steep curvy down hills doing the braaaaaaatbwaaaaaabrat routine and then it occurs to me just to douse the damn motor and use the grade to my advantage. I went from 6000 feet to near sea level with my knees in the breeze with no sound but the wind and the western sizzlin of my hot tires on the street. Swoopin free and easy like a psychodelic Pterodactyl leaving a dealer maintained factory approved running Harley Heritage softail classic in my dust.
I had one of my all time top motorcycle rides with the motor off. Dig that you hundert and fiddy horsepower power hungry freaks.
At the bottom of the mountain we come to a T in the road that has a fruit stand. We sit there in the shade recalibrating. I am not entirely sure what day of the week it is (although I am sure Ant would have told me). I get the feeling that there has been to much dilly dallying and I should make some northern tracks. There is some cordial shit shot with Ant and Unk.
In the mean time a lady drove her muy expensive jap (can a person still say jap?) car up on a stump in front of us in the parking lot raising the left front tire clean off the ground. They had to call a tow truck to dislodge it and move it away. I wish I could record the accident revelation session with her high falutin husband.
Wife: Honey I have some bad news
Husband: yes………….
Wife: I was in an accident.
Husband: How is the car, (logically knowing if she was bad hurt she wouldn’t be on the phone)? I mean you? I mean are? I mean how car you are? I mean cow are you doing?(he tries to stutter his way out of the gaffe).
Wife: (Understanding his temporary mistake is just the catalyst she needed for a chance to quit playing defense and go on the offensive) You never loved me you only care about your damn car.
Husband: (dejectedly realizing he cannot defend himself against her womanly wiles) Do you want me to come get you?
Wife: Whatever, ass. (wife smiles to herself at her deft handling of a dicey situation).
Game, Set, Match Wife
I made that whole thing up in my mind I am sure it would never have happened that way.
We mutually decide that Unk and Ant have had as much of me as is practical and I get a nagging feeling that I still have 3400 miles to go so Unk heads south and I throw my skeletal remains back onto the bike and peel off to the north.
Notice the subtle arrow pointing toward my slowmoving tractor triangle. It is subtly placed there to create a sense of forboding.
Bad Dad
It is still hotter than blazes but I don’t really care. Dollbaby, never one to complain, seems fairly happy and excited. Cack is thirsty for more Dinosaur squeezins. As I cruised through suburban Fresno all the gas stations where on the wrong side of the road or I didn’t see them till too late or I was in the wrong lane. One thing led to another and I ended up in the ghetto/barrio and still not found either a big fat north/south freeway or a gas station. We finally lurch into a real seedy bullet proof plexiglass petrol station as the soundtrack to Armeggedon approaches from behind me. An espanik feller on an absolutely tricked out bagger hog rolls in with twin 6x9 speakers blasting (mounted in the bags) that deep ghetto bass that makes soccer moms lock their doors. Every time the beat hits bottom my poindexter crime victim style glasses vibrate and make me sneeze. A bunch of African American fellers ridin on DUBs in a 1995 Chevy Blazer pull over to the Harley guy and have a brief confab about how they are gonna tie ropes to my legs and pull me into two separate pieces (while somehow magicly conversing over 149,237.5 decible music) and then take my atm card and spend my money imprudently. Never mind my daughter. I know all this for a fact because I watch COPS and I have seen movies about this type of thing. In the meantime a wino comes over and starts blabbering absolute gibberish and really anxiously wanting a response. My paranometer was flashing MAX. My excel spreadsheet threat matrix had nothing but red blinking squares. I am eyeing the bear mace as the heavily gang tattooed rolling beatbox guy sauntered toward me fumbling in his drawers for his 9mm. As he got into point blank range his right hand shot out of his pocket and he handed me his business card and said “yo if you ever need any custom paint or fiberglass work give me a call” he looked at my bike, smiled and left with his homeys in tow.
Potentially devisive Preconception rant
Whenever I do my occasional reality checks on the state of affairs of the world I run it through my personal experience filter.
List of ethnic groups that have personally in any way damaged me.
1) Mexicans=0
2) African Americans=0 (they seem to be a much greater threat to each other)
3) Middle aged white men= bastards involved themselves in speculation on the mortgage markets and sold a bunch of semi worthless notes to large wall street unregulated semi worthless guys whose malfeasance caused the equity in my house (sweat of my hard working brow/life savings) to vaporize. Of course other middle aged white guys in politics will further bleed me to make sure the semiworthless notes are backed up with my tax money so the heads of the banks do not receive any general discomfort because of their greed. I am starting to feel like the slow buffalo in those National Geographic specials on how charming wolves are. I hope before they die they look down out of their Gulfstream jets at the vast land beneath them and have a moment of understanding about how their greed has affected peoples lives and then beg for forgiveness. The free market system is only free for a select few, you and me gotta pay. Whatever you do don’t turn off the TV and pay attention and make these absolute pieces of shit pay the cost to be the boss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo
4) Inuit=0
5) Trinidad/Tobagans=0
6) Liberals=made me pay my .23 Cent late fee on “Old Yeller” from the library circa 1965 and made sure my youthful coke bottle thick poindexter glasses where paid for from insurance.
I figure Warren Buffet recently read the passage in the book of Mathew about rich guys having the same odds getting into heaven as a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle that is why he is busy handing over his cash to charity.
Gods Only Party has a two pronged approach to the thorny rich guy issue.
1) try to get the bible edited to have the word needle changed to St. louis arch.
2) Secretly try to use genetic modification to breed futuristic microscopic camels
Potentially devisive Rant over
I had to make a decision at this point. Do I head back to the coast, get tangled in another metropolitan area (san fran) and add another several hundred totally scenic miles to my trip or semi leasurely head north up the smoke covered flat central valley on the freeway?
Stockton Ho!
============================================================
rant free day (into the mild)
Crater Lake
Doll and I wake up in a motel somewhere north of Stockton. We review my big laminated trucker atlas for our options and decide to meander up to Crater Lake Oregon. Before we leave I call up Ant to check in and see how their trip to the coast is progressing. She informs me that they are in a rental truck with Unks bike in the back. Apparently 9 miles after they left the magic Vermin/Cack force field they were rear ended by a Gomer.
Unk was a master bike handler during the whole thing. He was stopped at a light waiting to turn into a gas station. When the light turned green he said he thought the clutch cable broke and shot him through the intersection as he masterfully kept better’n half a ton o’ metal and meat intact and upright.
At this point without verminal guidance Unk had enough of this foolishness and called Ryder. Any problem that can be solved with the swipe of a pregnant debit card aint a problem and he and Ant rolled back home snugglin in the front of a Ford F-250 with a gimped up Hog in the back. I hope she was sitting in the middle seat. I hope he understands that this minor inconvenience was just part of the story of the summer of ‘08’ I hope they rolled south to their gillion dollar seaside splendor and appreciated the value of a $3.25 tractor warning triangle from Farm and Fleet on the back of a shitty bike. I hope that they laughed like they did when they were in college living from check to check. I hope that for the 45 feet that Unk controlled that bike after being unceremoniously rearended in that intersection that Ant knew she married a man. I hope they know the instant that that idiot hit them they were on the brink of life/death and could appreciate the value of both. I hope that for a few days they felt good feelings for the road and all the unknowns that it holds (and didn't focus on the bent sheet metal).
I look forward to traveling with them someday in the future if they will still have me.
I inform Doll of the incident with Unk and Ant she shows the appropriate amount of concern for their well being. I have to tell the Doll that “The Unk Incident” should not be revealed to any of the Familial units until the right place and time (which ideally should not be for several months on a pontoon boat in a Michigan Lake) so as to avoid any untoward trepidation from any of the concerned non-adventuring fems. I have to teach her the difference between lying and the withholding of evidence that will do no one any good. There are generally a couple of incidents per trip that fall into that category.
We chuck a few groceries down our captain crunch caverns and fling our legs over Cack
and head north into the smoke of a seriously inflamed north central sanwahkeen valley. This next stretch is hot but uneventful so I might as well just do the standard ride report thing so if you haven’t seen the stuff you will know what was flashing in front of our peepers all day (jeez you guys have a long state).
I have since found out the actual living legend Merle Haggard still lives in this area and I could have talked to his current barber instead of his boyhood barber. That would make a fascinating (not) coffee table book "the barber interviews".\
Hairdo by Helmut, (part of the disgruntled youth chronicles)
We are smoking up I-5 at a blistering 63.5 mph as I approach one of these lumbering metallic beasts of burden when I hear a sharp report i.e. explosion (in nascar refered to as a daygum big bang) when the hind quarters of the semi in front of me shimmied and start chucking off retread tires like a trailer park queen does her bra at the sight of a 12 pack and a paycheck. Everything turns slow motion, like it tends to, when a current event is fixin to let the air out of you! The goodyear gators are snappin at my ankles flopping and spinning all over the road in front and around me I tiptoe through the mess without a scratch the only ramifications was the hummingbird in my left front pocket seemed rather excited. Near death? Probably not but none the less I prefer to stay on the bike in freeway situations.
A little too little, a little too late too
I relearned something I had found out 2 decades ago, central Oregon is hot in the summer
Ride, Ride ride, ride,rhyde reighed wried ryed bla bla blab la majestic stuff and what have you. Ooooooooh aaaaaaaaah whatever.
We hangout and charge cell phones in Klamath Falls late in the afternoon. With the phone charged we touch base with the nervous fems in Motown and tell them all is well. I hand the phone to Dollbaby and give her the hairy eye that informs her to start practicing some dialogue discretion as per the truck tire and Unk wreck incident if she wants to continue this trip. We pace around Klamdip falls for a couple of hours as it felt like the adventure was really starting and we were hanging on the edge of the unknown. Finally we couldn’t put it off any more and we puttered off into one of the long empty stretchs of my LTDA (laminated truck driver atlas) headed in the direction of crater lake.
Seenery
Sawnery
As we head toward this geographic zit I start to notice some unusual white marble outcroppings. I had semi intended to be several hundred miles west of here at his point in the trip so I had not planned on incountering SNOW! This early or at all on this trip. I was significantly unprepared for cold weather travel.
Fortunately I had my Mississippi Mink Koat in the trunk.
We pulled into the Craterlake national park campground and something was definitely amiss. Pretty much no one else was there because It had just opened for the season. WHAT? (approx June 26th)
We flung out our tent into the first open spot we could find (not tough because there was only one or two other campers in the whole park.
The only thing that separates us from common animals.
The ability to loose tools.
Once camp was set up and the swing-away utilized we ate our beans and corn and strolled over to the lip of a canyon and sat down and shot the breeze for a hour as the sun went down. I inform Doll of the genius in only bringing one pair of black pants as black never gets dirty (that’s why sweet thang doesn’t let me buy black underwear). As part of my general slide into old manlyness I have started to appreciate a good Honduran polyester pair of ridin britches. Something that will ideally melt right to your knee bone in a motorcycle crash. Dickies is my brand of choice. They never wear out or get wrinkled and they come in regular scrawny guy size wrather than the modern relaxed (fatbastard) sizes.
So to prove my point about the cleanliness of the black jeans I took a couple of handfuls of Oregon arid mountain dust and covered my legs with it. The idea being that I would stand up, vigorously brush off the dust and my Dickies would appear like new as if by Majic. What really happened is every spot where I spilled food or cleaned my dipstick, over the past week, appeared out of nowhere like some clay colored tie die. Doll baby fell over with paroxisms of laughter. Looks like tomorrow is laundry day.
To approximate a normal human camping experience I chisel an eight inch thick ice puck out of the fire ring and start a fire (without gasoline).
Doll reads "Of Vermin and Men" and gets some edification.
The Verm has a quiet moment and appreciates the evening and his beautiful daughter.
We eventually retire to casa de vermin and I spend a 28degree night in a 40degree rated sleeping bag. I got up once to pee and saw the glory of a mountain sky in the dead of night. I tried to roust sleeping beauty to look but she just looked out the rain fly and said, “yeah, great dad, whatever,” and went back to sleep. It is no wonder great poets and literature come from mountains and deserts, and not cubicles in office parks across suburbia.
Good night
______________---====================================____Doll and I wake up in a motel somewhere north of Stockton. We review my big laminated trucker atlas for our options and decide to meander up to Crater Lake Oregon. Before we leave I call up Ant to check in and see how their trip to the coast is progressing. She informs me that they are in a rental truck with Unks bike in the back. Apparently 9 miles after they left the magic Vermin/Cack force field they were rear ended by a Gomer.
Unk was a master bike handler during the whole thing. He was stopped at a light waiting to turn into a gas station. When the light turned green he said he thought the clutch cable broke and shot him through the intersection as he masterfully kept better’n half a ton o’ metal and meat intact and upright.
At this point without verminal guidance Unk had enough of this foolishness and called Ryder. Any problem that can be solved with the swipe of a pregnant debit card aint a problem and he and Ant rolled back home snugglin in the front of a Ford F-250 with a gimped up Hog in the back. I hope she was sitting in the middle seat. I hope he understands that this minor inconvenience was just part of the story of the summer of ‘08’ I hope they rolled south to their gillion dollar seaside splendor and appreciated the value of a $3.25 tractor warning triangle from Farm and Fleet on the back of a shitty bike. I hope that they laughed like they did when they were in college living from check to check. I hope that for the 45 feet that Unk controlled that bike after being unceremoniously rearended in that intersection that Ant knew she married a man. I hope they know the instant that that idiot hit them they were on the brink of life/death and could appreciate the value of both. I hope that for a few days they felt good feelings for the road and all the unknowns that it holds (and didn't focus on the bent sheet metal).
I look forward to traveling with them someday in the future if they will still have me.
I inform Doll of the incident with Unk and Ant she shows the appropriate amount of concern for their well being. I have to tell the Doll that “The Unk Incident” should not be revealed to any of the Familial units until the right place and time (which ideally should not be for several months on a pontoon boat in a Michigan Lake) so as to avoid any untoward trepidation from any of the concerned non-adventuring fems. I have to teach her the difference between lying and the withholding of evidence that will do no one any good. There are generally a couple of incidents per trip that fall into that category.
We chuck a few groceries down our captain crunch caverns and fling our legs over Cack
and head north into the smoke of a seriously inflamed north central sanwahkeen valley. This next stretch is hot but uneventful so I might as well just do the standard ride report thing so if you haven’t seen the stuff you will know what was flashing in front of our peepers all day (jeez you guys have a long state).
I have since found out the actual living legend Merle Haggard still lives in this area and I could have talked to his current barber instead of his boyhood barber. That would make a fascinating (not) coffee table book "the barber interviews".\
Hairdo by Helmut, (part of the disgruntled youth chronicles)
We are smoking up I-5 at a blistering 63.5 mph as I approach one of these lumbering metallic beasts of burden when I hear a sharp report i.e. explosion (in nascar refered to as a daygum big bang) when the hind quarters of the semi in front of me shimmied and start chucking off retread tires like a trailer park queen does her bra at the sight of a 12 pack and a paycheck. Everything turns slow motion, like it tends to, when a current event is fixin to let the air out of you! The goodyear gators are snappin at my ankles flopping and spinning all over the road in front and around me I tiptoe through the mess without a scratch the only ramifications was the hummingbird in my left front pocket seemed rather excited. Near death? Probably not but none the less I prefer to stay on the bike in freeway situations.
A little too little, a little too late too
I relearned something I had found out 2 decades ago, central Oregon is hot in the summer
Ride, Ride ride, ride,rhyde reighed wried ryed bla bla blab la majestic stuff and what have you. Ooooooooh aaaaaaaaah whatever.
We hangout and charge cell phones in Klamath Falls late in the afternoon. With the phone charged we touch base with the nervous fems in Motown and tell them all is well. I hand the phone to Dollbaby and give her the hairy eye that informs her to start practicing some dialogue discretion as per the truck tire and Unk wreck incident if she wants to continue this trip. We pace around Klamdip falls for a couple of hours as it felt like the adventure was really starting and we were hanging on the edge of the unknown. Finally we couldn’t put it off any more and we puttered off into one of the long empty stretchs of my LTDA (laminated truck driver atlas) headed in the direction of crater lake.
Seenery
Sawnery
As we head toward this geographic zit I start to notice some unusual white marble outcroppings. I had semi intended to be several hundred miles west of here at his point in the trip so I had not planned on incountering SNOW! This early or at all on this trip. I was significantly unprepared for cold weather travel.
Fortunately I had my Mississippi Mink Koat in the trunk.
We pulled into the Craterlake national park campground and something was definitely amiss. Pretty much no one else was there because It had just opened for the season. WHAT? (approx June 26th)
We flung out our tent into the first open spot we could find (not tough because there was only one or two other campers in the whole park.
The only thing that separates us from common animals.
The ability to loose tools.
Once camp was set up and the swing-away utilized we ate our beans and corn and strolled over to the lip of a canyon and sat down and shot the breeze for a hour as the sun went down. I inform Doll of the genius in only bringing one pair of black pants as black never gets dirty (that’s why sweet thang doesn’t let me buy black underwear). As part of my general slide into old manlyness I have started to appreciate a good Honduran polyester pair of ridin britches. Something that will ideally melt right to your knee bone in a motorcycle crash. Dickies is my brand of choice. They never wear out or get wrinkled and they come in regular scrawny guy size wrather than the modern relaxed (fatbastard) sizes.
So to prove my point about the cleanliness of the black jeans I took a couple of handfuls of Oregon arid mountain dust and covered my legs with it. The idea being that I would stand up, vigorously brush off the dust and my Dickies would appear like new as if by Majic. What really happened is every spot where I spilled food or cleaned my dipstick, over the past week, appeared out of nowhere like some clay colored tie die. Doll baby fell over with paroxisms of laughter. Looks like tomorrow is laundry day.
To approximate a normal human camping experience I chisel an eight inch thick ice puck out of the fire ring and start a fire (without gasoline).
Doll reads "Of Vermin and Men" and gets some edification.
The Verm has a quiet moment and appreciates the evening and his beautiful daughter.
We eventually retire to casa de vermin and I spend a 28degree night in a 40degree rated sleeping bag. I got up once to pee and saw the glory of a mountain sky in the dead of night. I tried to roust sleeping beauty to look but she just looked out the rain fly and said, “yeah, great dad, whatever,” and went back to sleep. It is no wonder great poets and literature come from mountains and deserts, and not cubicles in office parks across suburbia.
Good night
just another day
I obviously can’t execute day sized hunks of this report so I will just punch them in hit and miss for awhile. I will keep them in day size hunks but just keep editing them to add stuff. so if you don't read the words good night that means i will add to that post with edits wrather than do several posts per day.
Rise and shine:
We wake up, remember where we are, (crater Lake) and start getting organized. Once again I figure I have made a mistake buying return tickets because I have a subtle nervousness and drive to move I wish I didn’t have. I am getting older and the need to do high mathematically significant miles is leaving and I just want to bumble around slowly reading the damn roadside markers. Any how I need to do laundry after the dirt incident the previous evening and as I only brought one pair of pants.
Embarrassing photo your daughter prays her friends never see.
George Clooney eat your heart out
I had to wear this get up because I had only one pair of pants. All the foreigners I ran into that morning got a bad impression of Americans.
Possibly devisive rant #2
Anti Iron butt style riding rant. I saw a interview with Gary Eagan, the mileage king (Prudhoe Bay to Key West in 4 days) I used to do hard rides and enjoyed them at the time but lately it occurred to me that you might as well put your bike up on the centerstand,in the driveway, put it in 6th gear and sit there watching TV. The interview with Gary seemed more like a Jr. High math story problem then it did an excellent adventure. I am sorry but if you need a catheter to complete a ride in the time you want to it aint worth it. He seemed like a nice guy and I admire his gumption but that style of riding just aint for me. I used to do thousand mile days regularily now I just like to do 300-400 miles on two lanes. Of course the guy that made me watch the interview has $50,ooo.00* worth of bikes in his garage that never get more the 30 miles from home.
*sub rant O0o There was a guy at an unnamed USA car company supplier that spent his days scanning my documentation searching for zeros where their should have been upper case o’s and vice versa. He would find one every couple of months and It gave him great satisfaction circling it in red and sending it back to me with a terse note. In his world this was proof that I had failed and he had succeeded and validated his existence. So I used to purposely do that every s0 often just to keep him on his toes and whenever he w0uld miss it I would tell him that one made it past him but I wouldn't tell him when and it would drive him crazy. God I bet he is good in bed. I wonder why the USA auto industry is in so much trouble all the time? There are half a dozen people at work that want to kill me and he is one of them. Don't worry, sweet thang has the list and will make sure they/he/she/it are prosecuted.
Good lord willin if I get to retire I plan on cruising all over the world gummin up the works at a real slow pace.
Rant over.
We finally got rolling and headed up to the top of the zit. The road that circles the caldera was closed on account of snow so we just nicked the western edge did the brief ooooh aaaaaaah and got some serious envy and admiration from the aluminum clad Winnebox operators, wishin they was us, and we headed back down toward Eugene Oregon.
Cool looking blue nut pecker
We cruised down hill for a while and I kind of wanted to do a back road "get lost for awhile" road so I went perpendicular to the north at one point but a guy in a powerline utility truck said that no one had managed to get through there yet this year on account of the snow but who knows maybe I would be the first. If I hadn’t had the fruit of my hanes on the back of the bike I would have done it but sweet thing insist on our children retaining their skeletal continuity on a trip so I turned around and took the paved road.
The weather is perfect, which kind of makes for a dull ride report. As a matter of fact the lack of external suffering tends to let the internal mental kind rear its ugly head more ferociously (but more on that later).
=======================================
__________________Rise and shine:
We wake up, remember where we are, (crater Lake) and start getting organized. Once again I figure I have made a mistake buying return tickets because I have a subtle nervousness and drive to move I wish I didn’t have. I am getting older and the need to do high mathematically significant miles is leaving and I just want to bumble around slowly reading the damn roadside markers. Any how I need to do laundry after the dirt incident the previous evening and as I only brought one pair of pants.
Embarrassing photo your daughter prays her friends never see.
George Clooney eat your heart out
I had to wear this get up because I had only one pair of pants. All the foreigners I ran into that morning got a bad impression of Americans.
Possibly devisive rant #2
Anti Iron butt style riding rant. I saw a interview with Gary Eagan, the mileage king (Prudhoe Bay to Key West in 4 days) I used to do hard rides and enjoyed them at the time but lately it occurred to me that you might as well put your bike up on the centerstand,in the driveway, put it in 6th gear and sit there watching TV. The interview with Gary seemed more like a Jr. High math story problem then it did an excellent adventure. I am sorry but if you need a catheter to complete a ride in the time you want to it aint worth it. He seemed like a nice guy and I admire his gumption but that style of riding just aint for me. I used to do thousand mile days regularily now I just like to do 300-400 miles on two lanes. Of course the guy that made me watch the interview has $50,ooo.00* worth of bikes in his garage that never get more the 30 miles from home.
*sub rant O0o There was a guy at an unnamed USA car company supplier that spent his days scanning my documentation searching for zeros where their should have been upper case o’s and vice versa. He would find one every couple of months and It gave him great satisfaction circling it in red and sending it back to me with a terse note. In his world this was proof that I had failed and he had succeeded and validated his existence. So I used to purposely do that every s0 often just to keep him on his toes and whenever he w0uld miss it I would tell him that one made it past him but I wouldn't tell him when and it would drive him crazy. God I bet he is good in bed. I wonder why the USA auto industry is in so much trouble all the time? There are half a dozen people at work that want to kill me and he is one of them. Don't worry, sweet thang has the list and will make sure they/he/she/it are prosecuted.
Good lord willin if I get to retire I plan on cruising all over the world gummin up the works at a real slow pace.
Rant over.
We finally got rolling and headed up to the top of the zit. The road that circles the caldera was closed on account of snow so we just nicked the western edge did the brief ooooh aaaaaaah and got some serious envy and admiration from the aluminum clad Winnebox operators, wishin they was us, and we headed back down toward Eugene Oregon.
Cool looking blue nut pecker
We cruised down hill for a while and I kind of wanted to do a back road "get lost for awhile" road so I went perpendicular to the north at one point but a guy in a powerline utility truck said that no one had managed to get through there yet this year on account of the snow but who knows maybe I would be the first. If I hadn’t had the fruit of my hanes on the back of the bike I would have done it but sweet thing insist on our children retaining their skeletal continuity on a trip so I turned around and took the paved road.
The weather is perfect, which kind of makes for a dull ride report. As a matter of fact the lack of external suffering tends to let the internal mental kind rear its ugly head more ferociously (but more on that later).
=======================================
seattle ho
We rode the scenic scene down off the zit for several hours taking our time and relaxing nothing real entertaining happening until we headed north on I-5.
Semi Horrifying incident Du Jour
I was flogging the cack northbound into hells own headwind (so stiff it was making my clutch slip on my infrequent throttle to the stops lumbering object passes). As I was passing alongside a Winnebagel in some mountain cleavage, at 75 mph,a large stinking feathered object, probably a vulture, nonchalantly flew out of a tree into the wind in front of the motor coach. The head wind was faster than this enormous winged garbage truck could fly so even though it was pointed north it was traveling south into the front of the motorhome. I was to the left of the motorhome so I was blissfully unaware of the condors conundrum until it realized the trouble it was in and freaked out and hung a left into my path in the left lane about head high. The thing flapped once and got just enough altitude to clear my head. I didn’t even react till a hundred feet after the entire altercation. Jeez motorcycles are dangerous.
I think if I could be any animal on earth it would be a buzzard. They get to fly around effortlessly and when other species are having a real bad day they get to feast. The only drawback is that you have to settle for being a lot homely. If they just had a nice white feathered head the would get to be on all kinds of money and various flags and stuff.
So the final leg on up to Seattle was fairly dull. Perfect weather (which I hate) made for a real dull lethargic drone on up the freeway. We hit some traffic in Portland and chilled out for a while in the grass outside a Taco Bell. After spending the trip so far in the ethnic Hamilton Beach blender that is the central valley it was kind of odd seeing a predominately white population. I expected Fonzie to show up any minute with some poodle skirted babe in tow.
Notice the pod of rich guys feasting on my economic entrails
Also notice the absolutely cloudless skies that the northwest tries to hide from the rest of the country. Your secret is out! The Pacific Northwest is a semi arid paradise, everybody move there on the count of three.
The kernel Sanders troops being deployed to the battle of the bulbous, all of these good little soldiers are waiting for their yearly continous improvement discussions with their chain of command each one holds on to the belief that next year will show career growth. If you can just consume enough corn and lay enough eggs we have special plans for you. Believe in the system and everything will work out fine. Then one day they all get to go to an offsite meeting.
Mini Food rant=did you ever notice guys that obsess over the subtle differences between various motor oils (in vehicles they intend to sell within a couple of years) shovel tons of food into their bodies that are supposed to last a lifetime without question. To the point of mocking anyone that dare inquire as to the quality of the human fuel we consume (health nut). This points to one of the fundmental pathologies of modern man i.e. the machine is far more important than the man.
The Portland area looked pretty cool I just wish I had time to linger and get a real taste its flavor. Damn schedule. It looks like a town with plenty of safe cubicles maybe someday I will leave my human eggcrate and land in one out here.
We cruise through the cool evening up east of the Pungent Sound. It becomes apparent that we will land in Seattle so I call my buddy J.R. and politely ask if I can sleep on his floor. This is rather exciting for me as I have not laid eyes on him for at least ten years maybe 15teen. In the interim I have procured offspring and he hath procured a damsel so fair. So fair in fact that I suspected some sort of blackmail/kidnapping/ransom situation. She seemed amiable enough and I could see no evidence of duct tape or cable tie restraint so I relax and do not call the authorities on her behalf.
Anyway we cruise into the evening in perfect weather with perfect skies on a perfect road into the night. As the sun was going down we came around a corner to see Seattle just as the night lights where coming on it was “THE PERFECT PHOTO OPPORTUNITY” I start with my unintelligible shrieking and motion making that my kids have come to know as either a request for a photo or a grand Mal seizure. Boingo! It turns out dollbaby has drifters knack for photography.
Good night.
========================================================
Semi Horrifying incident Du Jour
I was flogging the cack northbound into hells own headwind (so stiff it was making my clutch slip on my infrequent throttle to the stops lumbering object passes). As I was passing alongside a Winnebagel in some mountain cleavage, at 75 mph,a large stinking feathered object, probably a vulture, nonchalantly flew out of a tree into the wind in front of the motor coach. The head wind was faster than this enormous winged garbage truck could fly so even though it was pointed north it was traveling south into the front of the motorhome. I was to the left of the motorhome so I was blissfully unaware of the condors conundrum until it realized the trouble it was in and freaked out and hung a left into my path in the left lane about head high. The thing flapped once and got just enough altitude to clear my head. I didn’t even react till a hundred feet after the entire altercation. Jeez motorcycles are dangerous.
I think if I could be any animal on earth it would be a buzzard. They get to fly around effortlessly and when other species are having a real bad day they get to feast. The only drawback is that you have to settle for being a lot homely. If they just had a nice white feathered head the would get to be on all kinds of money and various flags and stuff.
So the final leg on up to Seattle was fairly dull. Perfect weather (which I hate) made for a real dull lethargic drone on up the freeway. We hit some traffic in Portland and chilled out for a while in the grass outside a Taco Bell. After spending the trip so far in the ethnic Hamilton Beach blender that is the central valley it was kind of odd seeing a predominately white population. I expected Fonzie to show up any minute with some poodle skirted babe in tow.
Notice the pod of rich guys feasting on my economic entrails
Also notice the absolutely cloudless skies that the northwest tries to hide from the rest of the country. Your secret is out! The Pacific Northwest is a semi arid paradise, everybody move there on the count of three.
The kernel Sanders troops being deployed to the battle of the bulbous, all of these good little soldiers are waiting for their yearly continous improvement discussions with their chain of command each one holds on to the belief that next year will show career growth. If you can just consume enough corn and lay enough eggs we have special plans for you. Believe in the system and everything will work out fine. Then one day they all get to go to an offsite meeting.
Mini Food rant=did you ever notice guys that obsess over the subtle differences between various motor oils (in vehicles they intend to sell within a couple of years) shovel tons of food into their bodies that are supposed to last a lifetime without question. To the point of mocking anyone that dare inquire as to the quality of the human fuel we consume (health nut). This points to one of the fundmental pathologies of modern man i.e. the machine is far more important than the man.
The Portland area looked pretty cool I just wish I had time to linger and get a real taste its flavor. Damn schedule. It looks like a town with plenty of safe cubicles maybe someday I will leave my human eggcrate and land in one out here.
We cruise through the cool evening up east of the Pungent Sound. It becomes apparent that we will land in Seattle so I call my buddy J.R. and politely ask if I can sleep on his floor. This is rather exciting for me as I have not laid eyes on him for at least ten years maybe 15teen. In the interim I have procured offspring and he hath procured a damsel so fair. So fair in fact that I suspected some sort of blackmail/kidnapping/ransom situation. She seemed amiable enough and I could see no evidence of duct tape or cable tie restraint so I relax and do not call the authorities on her behalf.
Anyway we cruise into the evening in perfect weather with perfect skies on a perfect road into the night. As the sun was going down we came around a corner to see Seattle just as the night lights where coming on it was “THE PERFECT PHOTO OPPORTUNITY” I start with my unintelligible shrieking and motion making that my kids have come to know as either a request for a photo or a grand Mal seizure. Boingo! It turns out dollbaby has drifters knack for photography.
Good night.
========================================================
When i am good and ready
Dithering about Seattle
I will show the pictures and enter text as the mood strikes
Don't you hate when you are made of cement and can't pick you nose. I decide to give a brotha a hand.
Troll booger deposits
Statue of me and my fuel injection/CDI/electrical circuit hammer
Wildlife
Angsty affluent suburban art
I give dollbaby the true facts of life and what happens to cute young boys if they touch her skin.
And what happens to her if she lets them.
During the 90s when the cubicles where becoming engourged with eager young flesh the pay rates of the fleshy bits started to rise. That was an abomination unto the bishops of the almighty Dallah so they loaded the cubicle meat into a bus and toted them to a mega church across the street and showed them a video featuring these very same fish flingin' guys. Just imagine, they could be as happy as the fish flinging guys with a lowpaying job just as long as they had a joyous playfull attitude and had a deep abiding faith in the Cardinals of cash and their lord Dallah almighty.
I personally smelt sumpin fishy
This is, of course, before they put a fiber optic cable to India and they realized there 1.128 billion (that is like a 1 with gobs of zeros) people that would be quite happy with a small sack of rice instead of tons of money. Bless their hearts.
Needless to say I had to check out how joyous they where for myself.
As usual the younguns were excitable and joyous and the old ones weren't
Grumpy middle aged fish flinger wishin he worked in a cubicle.
I liked this guys moxey he was essentially in a one man fight to bring haysoos to the semi rich yuppies that congregate at the Public market, good luck.
These Columbian fellers where hanging out at the market they where the real deal. They had ridden all the way for Medillin on small displacement dirt bikes. Note the sterile unadventured V-strom with pristine skid plate next to them. The guy has a good job but only 2 weeks per year off.
Americas biggest export, canned leisure.
I don't seem that out off place here!
Dollbaby is looking into alternate careers.
JR and I eat Lunch. Globalization is working out for him he engineers large objects in China. The pay is good but the commute is a beeeaaatch.
This is the Verm using a wire wheel to remove old busted off epoxy filler from the muffler. I am entering Canada in the morning and my bike has been increasing in decibles since Colorado last year. I want to draw as little attention to myself as is possible. This time I use JB Quick weld and it works perfect.
JRs Fem cooks us a splendid meal and we retire to the back yard to discuss a wide range of topics that concern us
I get worked up pretty good and have to go lay down.
Good night
====================================================================
I will show the pictures and enter text as the mood strikes
Don't you hate when you are made of cement and can't pick you nose. I decide to give a brotha a hand.
Troll booger deposits
Statue of me and my fuel injection/CDI/electrical circuit hammer
Wildlife
Angsty affluent suburban art
I give dollbaby the true facts of life and what happens to cute young boys if they touch her skin.
And what happens to her if she lets them.
During the 90s when the cubicles where becoming engourged with eager young flesh the pay rates of the fleshy bits started to rise. That was an abomination unto the bishops of the almighty Dallah so they loaded the cubicle meat into a bus and toted them to a mega church across the street and showed them a video featuring these very same fish flingin' guys. Just imagine, they could be as happy as the fish flinging guys with a lowpaying job just as long as they had a joyous playfull attitude and had a deep abiding faith in the Cardinals of cash and their lord Dallah almighty.
I personally smelt sumpin fishy
This is, of course, before they put a fiber optic cable to India and they realized there 1.128 billion (that is like a 1 with gobs of zeros) people that would be quite happy with a small sack of rice instead of tons of money. Bless their hearts.
Needless to say I had to check out how joyous they where for myself.
As usual the younguns were excitable and joyous and the old ones weren't
Grumpy middle aged fish flinger wishin he worked in a cubicle.
I liked this guys moxey he was essentially in a one man fight to bring haysoos to the semi rich yuppies that congregate at the Public market, good luck.
These Columbian fellers where hanging out at the market they where the real deal. They had ridden all the way for Medillin on small displacement dirt bikes. Note the sterile unadventured V-strom with pristine skid plate next to them. The guy has a good job but only 2 weeks per year off.
Americas biggest export, canned leisure.
I don't seem that out off place here!
Dollbaby is looking into alternate careers.
JR and I eat Lunch. Globalization is working out for him he engineers large objects in China. The pay is good but the commute is a beeeaaatch.
This is the Verm using a wire wheel to remove old busted off epoxy filler from the muffler. I am entering Canada in the morning and my bike has been increasing in decibles since Colorado last year. I want to draw as little attention to myself as is possible. This time I use JB Quick weld and it works perfect.
JRs Fem cooks us a splendid meal and we retire to the back yard to discuss a wide range of topics that concern us
I get worked up pretty good and have to go lay down.
Good night
====================================================================
Enter at your own risk
We wake up in Seattle ready for the real adventure to start
Song that Doll and I started singing in the morning and could not stop the rest of the trip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWaAy...eature=related
It becomes apparent that Cack is probably gonna make it North of Seattle so I make the decision to make reservations on the ferry up the inside passage. The boat trip would give me a chance to hang out and watch the scenery go by without having my constantly vigilant eyes on the road. This is a significant financial leap of faith. I have no small amount of tension as I have signed up to fling myself an additional 2375 miles into the unknown on a bike that is old enough to have graduated from high school last spring. Vermin moron or rocket surgeon only time will tell. Any way we do the hug, hug, pat,pat with JR and Damsel so fair and head north and east toward Hope B.C.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0zCM5IB7k
By the way as a promotional gimmick to encourage tourism Canada pretty much only hires hot chicks to be their customs agents. Way to go Canada Ay.
Yer average British Columbia scenery
Mental downward spiral triggering event
I was cruising east on some largish road with standard amounts of traffic, toward Hope BC, when I saw what would become the major mind warping catastrophe. I saw a dead smooshed adult raccoon with 2 dead smooshed teenage raccoons. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I have always had a natural kinship with road kill. These are the varmints that where picked last in gym class to be on the dodgeball team. They are slower and less adept at understanding their changing environment than the non smooshed varmints. This particular Racoon had done some seriously poor velocity calculations vis a vis road width and traffic and it’s entire family was flattened.
The brainbucket of doom on the dead racoon highway
“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
Hellen Keller
AAAAARG I start internalizin the dead varmints and ruminatin
ru·mi·nate
Show Spelled Pronunciation[roo-muh-neyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -nat·ed, -nat·ing.
–verb (used without object)
[Origin: 1525–35; < L rūminātus (ptp. of rūminārī, rūmināre to ruminate), equiv. to rūmin- (s. of rūmen rumen) + -ātus -ate1
—Synonyms 2. think, reflect
In other words I am essentially, regurgitating and rechewing mental silage over and over until at long last it becomes complete and udder bullshit. Or as my undyingly negative buddy big Ger says “food for thought gives you shit for brains”
I turn north toward the fear of the unknown while Hope vanishes in my rearview mirror.
The vermin backstory to put this rant in context
1958 Born on a farm as the agricultural era vanished
1967 Moved to the Motorcity as industry commenced to vanish
1995-2000 Went to night school to become part of the information/ knowledge sector and worked my way into a reasonable living just in time for India and China to come online.
2008 Saw some dead raccoons and took it real hard.
In other cultures (primitive?) there is some continuity. Ritual dictates the cycles of life, a boy grows with groceries from his father and wisdom from his grandfather. In our modern consumer driven material culture these links are being severed and dismissed. Fortunately I was raised knowing old school ways from my dad and grandfathers and my dad is being a good wise elder to my kids. I am just having a hell of a time getting the groceries and making sense of a world that increasingly looks like some bizarre science fiction movie.
Long story short I have to get my pups to make it to the other side of the road without getting smooshed and I don’t have a clue how, or for that matter why we even cross the road.
Is it s’posed to be 108 degrees in Central British Columbia
High Hot British Columbia Desert
I am kind of like an older greyhound track racing dog, I know no one ever catchs the rabbit, I have recently found out it isn’t even a real rabbit and I also know if I quit chasing it the veterinarian gets out the big syringe.
Now I am given the task of convincing my pups that the rabbit is gonna taste real good when they catch it.
These trips I take them on to show them the world as it really exists may actually confuse them and make it harder to chase the mechanical rabbit.
At this point, with too much alone in helmet time, I become angry with myself for not living in the moment. I have a beautiful daughter on the back of my good running bike in scenery that most people would die for and my thoughts keep ricocheting back and forth through time and space inside my helmet. I have set up plausible negative thought patterns that keep reinforcing themselves and obliterating any good thought that is foolish enough to stagger through.
This mountain ate too much roughage
As I head north the ruminations start mixing with Roger Millers
"Hah-ha I come on TV grinnin,’ wearin’ pistols and a hat
It’s a kiddy show and I’m a hero of the younger set
I’m the number one attraction every supermarket parkin’ lot
I’m the king of Kansas City, no thanks, Omaha, thanks a lot"
It is obvious to me that I am several thousand miles from home and quite probably headed for some nervous breakdown not unlike the one that had Robert Pirsig sitting in a puddle of his own piss with blisters on his fingers where a cigarette had burned clean through.
“I’m a Kansas City Star
That’s what I are
I drive a big old Cadillac with wahr wheels
And rhinestones on the spokes”
===================================================================
Song that Doll and I started singing in the morning and could not stop the rest of the trip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWaAy...eature=related
It becomes apparent that Cack is probably gonna make it North of Seattle so I make the decision to make reservations on the ferry up the inside passage. The boat trip would give me a chance to hang out and watch the scenery go by without having my constantly vigilant eyes on the road. This is a significant financial leap of faith. I have no small amount of tension as I have signed up to fling myself an additional 2375 miles into the unknown on a bike that is old enough to have graduated from high school last spring. Vermin moron or rocket surgeon only time will tell. Any way we do the hug, hug, pat,pat with JR and Damsel so fair and head north and east toward Hope B.C.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0zCM5IB7k
By the way as a promotional gimmick to encourage tourism Canada pretty much only hires hot chicks to be their customs agents. Way to go Canada Ay.
Yer average British Columbia scenery
Mental downward spiral triggering event
I was cruising east on some largish road with standard amounts of traffic, toward Hope BC, when I saw what would become the major mind warping catastrophe. I saw a dead smooshed adult raccoon with 2 dead smooshed teenage raccoons. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I have always had a natural kinship with road kill. These are the varmints that where picked last in gym class to be on the dodgeball team. They are slower and less adept at understanding their changing environment than the non smooshed varmints. This particular Racoon had done some seriously poor velocity calculations vis a vis road width and traffic and it’s entire family was flattened.
The brainbucket of doom on the dead racoon highway
“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
Hellen Keller
AAAAARG I start internalizin the dead varmints and ruminatin
ru·mi·nate
Show Spelled Pronunciation[roo-muh-neyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -nat·ed, -nat·ing.
–verb (used without object)
| 1. | to chew the cud, as a ruminant. |
| 2. | to meditate or muse; ponder. |
—Synonyms 2. think, reflect
In other words I am essentially, regurgitating and rechewing mental silage over and over until at long last it becomes complete and udder bullshit. Or as my undyingly negative buddy big Ger says “food for thought gives you shit for brains”
I turn north toward the fear of the unknown while Hope vanishes in my rearview mirror.
The vermin backstory to put this rant in context
1958 Born on a farm as the agricultural era vanished
1967 Moved to the Motorcity as industry commenced to vanish
1995-2000 Went to night school to become part of the information/ knowledge sector and worked my way into a reasonable living just in time for India and China to come online.
2008 Saw some dead raccoons and took it real hard.
In other cultures (primitive?) there is some continuity. Ritual dictates the cycles of life, a boy grows with groceries from his father and wisdom from his grandfather. In our modern consumer driven material culture these links are being severed and dismissed. Fortunately I was raised knowing old school ways from my dad and grandfathers and my dad is being a good wise elder to my kids. I am just having a hell of a time getting the groceries and making sense of a world that increasingly looks like some bizarre science fiction movie.
Long story short I have to get my pups to make it to the other side of the road without getting smooshed and I don’t have a clue how, or for that matter why we even cross the road.
Is it s’posed to be 108 degrees in Central British Columbia
High Hot British Columbia Desert
I am kind of like an older greyhound track racing dog, I know no one ever catchs the rabbit, I have recently found out it isn’t even a real rabbit and I also know if I quit chasing it the veterinarian gets out the big syringe.
Now I am given the task of convincing my pups that the rabbit is gonna taste real good when they catch it.
These trips I take them on to show them the world as it really exists may actually confuse them and make it harder to chase the mechanical rabbit.
At this point, with too much alone in helmet time, I become angry with myself for not living in the moment. I have a beautiful daughter on the back of my good running bike in scenery that most people would die for and my thoughts keep ricocheting back and forth through time and space inside my helmet. I have set up plausible negative thought patterns that keep reinforcing themselves and obliterating any good thought that is foolish enough to stagger through.
This mountain ate too much roughage
As I head north the ruminations start mixing with Roger Millers
"Hah-ha I come on TV grinnin,’ wearin’ pistols and a hat
It’s a kiddy show and I’m a hero of the younger set
I’m the number one attraction every supermarket parkin’ lot
I’m the king of Kansas City, no thanks, Omaha, thanks a lot"
It is obvious to me that I am several thousand miles from home and quite probably headed for some nervous breakdown not unlike the one that had Robert Pirsig sitting in a puddle of his own piss with blisters on his fingers where a cigarette had burned clean through.
“I’m a Kansas City Star
That’s what I are
I drive a big old Cadillac with wahr wheels
And rhinestones on the spokes”
===================================================================
headed toward the love boat
Logically/mentally I step away from the monkey mind/ internal dialogue buzzsaw and see a lot of similarities between my train of thought and the unibombers so I horsewhip the monkeys back into their cages and resume a reasonable facsimile of an noninsane excellent adventure.
Winston Churchill said NEVER,NEVER,NEVER,NEVER,NEVERNEVER EVER confuse your monkey butt rash creem and JB Weld Kwik set.
Summer here is about a week and a half long so all the critters and flora rock out .
Simultanious fleurgasm
We cruise into Williams Lake around dusk. The mental turmoil and the heat of the day has pretty much drained my vitality so instead of camping we get an old fashioned motel as all the modern ones were booked up by a rodeo that was in town. I set up my cook stove and cooked up some grub while Doll read a book. The day was done and so was I. I slept like the dead.
ahendepe shudders as he regains consciousness, he vaguely remembers a strange dream with a purdy young lady, mountains, gristle bares and killer whales, he is driving a car down a familiar road into the sunrise.
He recognizes the temple of consumption.
He has driven by this pyramid of putrescence approximately 8820 times, he notices the linear mathematical relationship between his number of passes, morning and night, and the height of the dump. He has prospered.
For the seventeenth year he fearfully, humbly asks to participate in the grocery grab. He approaches the machine, will it accept him? Will he get to feverishly paw at the little keys for his food pellet yet again?
DENIED
The old racoon has successfully herded his kits to the double yellow lines in the center of the road. Their eyes glow hi viz in the glare of the oncoming headlights. Cars and semi's go wailing past, they pause to catch their breath as the windblasts from the trucks ruffles their fur.
========================================
Winston Churchill said NEVER,NEVER,NEVER,NEVER,NEVERNEVER EVER confuse your monkey butt rash creem and JB Weld Kwik set.
Summer here is about a week and a half long so all the critters and flora rock out .
Simultanious fleurgasm
We cruise into Williams Lake around dusk. The mental turmoil and the heat of the day has pretty much drained my vitality so instead of camping we get an old fashioned motel as all the modern ones were booked up by a rodeo that was in town. I set up my cook stove and cooked up some grub while Doll read a book. The day was done and so was I. I slept like the dead.
headed to the love boat
We woke up In Williams Lake BC, Roger Miller and his Dead Racoon band have quit playing in my head temporily and It is a beautiful day out. So far at this point we have been “into the mild” for 10 days and have had not one drop of rain. I do a cursory review of the photos and can find not even one single cloud ever since we left San Diego.
I run across some adv riders from Jalisco Mexico at one of the chain hotels. I went over and eagerly shot the breeze with them trying to make friends with people from some place I might want to land. They didn’t really warm up to me (I think frightened is the term). They finally let their guard down enough to ask about route selections down by Kamloops as they are headed home. I was a horrible disappointment as all I had was my Laminated Trucker Atlas and I had not been anywhere near where they were asking about. We get gas and cruise toward Prince Rupert (boat) which is approx. 1.5 days away
This area seemed cow oriented .
Whos idea was it to strangulate a surly bulls test tackles and then sit on it?
I don’t really understand bull riding, isn’t there better ways to mulch yourself? If self destruction is the goal just pilot your scooter amongst the tires of a semi trailer on the freeway.
There was the big yearly rodeo at the fairgrounds and I would have dearly liked to hang out but I have my dagnabbed schedule. I know there is a boat motoring toward a dock and if I miss it my entire routine collapses and I have do a thousand mile detour.
This one time Paul Bunyon tripped over his kids size 15 marching band shoes and sprained his ankle and needed a wheel chair
Majestic forest on its way to becoming Orville Reddinbachers bags and houses and stuff.
I was motoring west on a road and I saw some movement to my right and all of a sudden a big gray wolf went shooting across the road in front of me. I looked to my left and saw this big unit.
We pretty much blasted down the road spending the night in Terrace BC . The Canucks were celebrating Canada Day which is the Canadian version of the Fourth of Julio in the USA. They celebrate not shooting redcoats and not setting into effect a chronic chain of blasting people that don't agree with you, cut you off in traffic, tax you without representation, give you poor performance reviews, irritate you at work or serve you lukewarm coffee. Buy and large, as a group, Canadians seem a lot less hostile. I think they must use h0ckey as a pressure valve. To deflect any accusations of being unpatriotic I will say that of the 200(+/-) countries in the world the USA is certainly one of them and being a citizen has worked out good for me. (as a historical footnote the battle of Camden was won by the british in the revolution because a young sentry named Wilson Charles Vermin was looking around the side of the trail for his can opener when British General Cornwallis launched his suprise attack. Causing one of the major setbacks for the American Patriots)
We finally stagger into Prince Rupert in the morning and I finally semi relax for the first time in the trip.
Dead Bronze Canadians
The bad with the good parenting moments
As we sat in Mommy laundrymat around 10 oclock in the morning (mommy is a chinese guy that runs the shoe store around the corner) several people came in to use the payphone.
Payphone user number1: mid thirties woman negotiates the value of some commercial affection for that days inebriates
Payphone user numberb: semi homeless stinky guy arranges to stop by his vitamin m merchants humble abode to procure his daily dosage
oh well I am showing my kids the world, hopefully they can see how unattractive substance abuse can be.
Apparently big city vice has infiltrated this quaint setting.
I relacks and stop to smell the flowers
Sorry doll your dad is a stone to the bone dork!
We cruise into the customs/ferry departure area and start a 2 day long yapping festival with other bikers and miscellany.
I fortuitously run into a guy (Gold wing Wayne) that I have been leapfrogging gas station to gas station since prince george. He is a newly retired bush pilot from Alaska that gives me several key pointers about how to comport myself around customs and get the primo sleeping spots on the deck of the ferry. Mucho Gracious ay.
GWWayne seems deeply disturbed by my rolling stock and uses every chance to point out how vastly superior his BRANNY NEW GOLDWING is. He becomes irritated with me as I point out that his additional $18,000 investment only provides cruise control and an obligation to worry and polish his scooter. His cruise control had two buttons I had to dwell on the fact that those buttons cost $9,000 each. This set up some good natured tension that was to last the next several days.
Dear big bad iron butt high milage guys these two women started out in Whitehorse Yukon and had ridden down the Cassiar Highway and over to Prince Rupert and where going to continue pedalling up from Haines back to their house in Whitehorse. And they looked good doing it!
Which near as I can figure is about 1800 miles.
I must have jimmied up the wire to my flux capacitor again
Those yapping truck drivers pilot those big semis into and out of the gaping maw
__________________=========================I run across some adv riders from Jalisco Mexico at one of the chain hotels. I went over and eagerly shot the breeze with them trying to make friends with people from some place I might want to land. They didn’t really warm up to me (I think frightened is the term). They finally let their guard down enough to ask about route selections down by Kamloops as they are headed home. I was a horrible disappointment as all I had was my Laminated Trucker Atlas and I had not been anywhere near where they were asking about. We get gas and cruise toward Prince Rupert (boat) which is approx. 1.5 days away
This area seemed cow oriented .
Whos idea was it to strangulate a surly bulls test tackles and then sit on it?
I don’t really understand bull riding, isn’t there better ways to mulch yourself? If self destruction is the goal just pilot your scooter amongst the tires of a semi trailer on the freeway.
There was the big yearly rodeo at the fairgrounds and I would have dearly liked to hang out but I have my dagnabbed schedule. I know there is a boat motoring toward a dock and if I miss it my entire routine collapses and I have do a thousand mile detour.
This one time Paul Bunyon tripped over his kids size 15 marching band shoes and sprained his ankle and needed a wheel chair
Majestic forest on its way to becoming Orville Reddinbachers bags and houses and stuff.
I was motoring west on a road and I saw some movement to my right and all of a sudden a big gray wolf went shooting across the road in front of me. I looked to my left and saw this big unit.
We pretty much blasted down the road spending the night in Terrace BC . The Canucks were celebrating Canada Day which is the Canadian version of the Fourth of Julio in the USA. They celebrate not shooting redcoats and not setting into effect a chronic chain of blasting people that don't agree with you, cut you off in traffic, tax you without representation, give you poor performance reviews, irritate you at work or serve you lukewarm coffee. Buy and large, as a group, Canadians seem a lot less hostile. I think they must use h0ckey as a pressure valve. To deflect any accusations of being unpatriotic I will say that of the 200(+/-) countries in the world the USA is certainly one of them and being a citizen has worked out good for me. (as a historical footnote the battle of Camden was won by the british in the revolution because a young sentry named Wilson Charles Vermin was looking around the side of the trail for his can opener when British General Cornwallis launched his suprise attack. Causing one of the major setbacks for the American Patriots)
We finally stagger into Prince Rupert in the morning and I finally semi relax for the first time in the trip.
Dead Bronze Canadians
The bad with the good parenting moments
As we sat in Mommy laundrymat around 10 oclock in the morning (mommy is a chinese guy that runs the shoe store around the corner) several people came in to use the payphone.
Payphone user number1: mid thirties woman negotiates the value of some commercial affection for that days inebriates
Payphone user numberb: semi homeless stinky guy arranges to stop by his vitamin m merchants humble abode to procure his daily dosage
oh well I am showing my kids the world, hopefully they can see how unattractive substance abuse can be.
Apparently big city vice has infiltrated this quaint setting.
I relacks and stop to smell the flowers
Sorry doll your dad is a stone to the bone dork!
We cruise into the customs/ferry departure area and start a 2 day long yapping festival with other bikers and miscellany.
I fortuitously run into a guy (Gold wing Wayne) that I have been leapfrogging gas station to gas station since prince george. He is a newly retired bush pilot from Alaska that gives me several key pointers about how to comport myself around customs and get the primo sleeping spots on the deck of the ferry. Mucho Gracious ay.
GWWayne seems deeply disturbed by my rolling stock and uses every chance to point out how vastly superior his BRANNY NEW GOLDWING is. He becomes irritated with me as I point out that his additional $18,000 investment only provides cruise control and an obligation to worry and polish his scooter. His cruise control had two buttons I had to dwell on the fact that those buttons cost $9,000 each. This set up some good natured tension that was to last the next several days.
Dear big bad iron butt high milage guys these two women started out in Whitehorse Yukon and had ridden down the Cassiar Highway and over to Prince Rupert and where going to continue pedalling up from Haines back to their house in Whitehorse. And they looked good doing it!
Which near as I can figure is about 1800 miles.
I must have jimmied up the wire to my flux capacitor again
Those yapping truck drivers pilot those big semis into and out of the gaping maw
intermission
While folks are milling about getting popcorn and smoking during this little intermission I would like to show you a picture (circa 1998)
of the genesis of a truely cackified bike. On the left we have my blank canvas on the right we have the art of the 2nd law of vermaldynamics* (ratropy, bad ideas fall off)
Ingredients
a) old belt drive Kaw 440
1) briggs and stratton pull start
b) 30 or 40 states
2) van running boards sawzalled to size
3) lean angle indicators (curb feelers)
4) anna nicole smith headlight array (headlight nacele from late 50s dodge found upside down in the field behind my house)
5) Alice Chalmers seat suspended with 350ci chevy valve springs
6) Old f150 right side mirror
12.5) Note the curb found barbeekue on the back.
7) barbeeque on back
r) wrotten mink remnants dangling off of tank
&) putrify your pungencense to taste
* the first law of vermal dynamics is never ever wash a good running bike. The only time to wash anything is if it is necesary to get to run. Like pistons you should never have yard waste on your piston.
The show will resume in 10 minutes please find your seats
=================================================================
of the genesis of a truely cackified bike. On the left we have my blank canvas on the right we have the art of the 2nd law of vermaldynamics* (ratropy, bad ideas fall off)
Ingredients
a) old belt drive Kaw 440
1) briggs and stratton pull start
b) 30 or 40 states
2) van running boards sawzalled to size
3) lean angle indicators (curb feelers)
4) anna nicole smith headlight array (headlight nacele from late 50s dodge found upside down in the field behind my house)
5) Alice Chalmers seat suspended with 350ci chevy valve springs
6) Old f150 right side mirror
12.5) Note the curb found barbeekue on the back.
7) barbeeque on back
r) wrotten mink remnants dangling off of tank
&) putrify your pungencense to taste
* the first law of vermal dynamics is never ever wash a good running bike. The only time to wash anything is if it is necesary to get to run. Like pistons you should never have yard waste on your piston.
The show will resume in 10 minutes please find your seats
=================================================================
onto the love boat
ON THE BOAT
Sitting in line on the way into the boat we encountered a ton of wonderful people. People really seem to be at their best when they are away from home and on vacation. It was during this part of the trip that I realized there is a grandma gestapo. Man I tell you if you are a grandma don't worry about your grandbabies on a trip because your senior sisters have your back. It was obvious dollbaby was someones grandbaby and in possible danger so everywhere we went their was a fem with a touch of grey asking her all kinds of questions about her trip (and consequently giving me the hairy eyeball).
It was right before boarding that I ran into Advrider Gale BT and his lovely wife Sandy. They seemed impressed with the Cack so I immediately knew they had impeccable taste. Those two were positutely vibrating with 100 percent good mojo, so, much to their chagrin, I latched on to them immediately.
The boat loading guys arranged us in the bowels of the boat so that if CACK fell over it would do the most possible damage to the approximately $58,000 USD of handsome highly polished rolling stock surrounding my personal chancre cycle (the first time I heard the word chancre was when my dads buddy Bob called me a chancre sore on the ass of all humanity).
So long Canadian Jobs
So long Prince Rupert
Once we launched and headed up the inside passage everybody congregated in the cafeteria for some vittles. I was plenty glad to be off the bike for awhile and looking forward to kicking back and relaxing. DJ, the gregarious mail guy from Texas, and his lovely wife Theresa correctly assumed that my services as a shipboard raconteur could be bought with 12ozees so I commenced to regaling them with tales of daring do.
The players right to left
A) Lovely Theresa (Djs wife)
B) DJ
We got done eating and with spirits at an all time high we retired to our stateroom.
I nearly got grumpy when a group of 30 teenagers showed up and threw their sleeping bags on the floor next to us. I immediately thought the worst and figured I was in for a night of giggling and fake fart noises but bless their hearts they all sat down and did some yoga type stretchs and meditation and quietly went off to sleep. I started getting a little self conscious on account of my old man floppy epiglotis (or undulating uvula or turgid tonsils, whatever little fleshy danglers there are in there) tends to make me sound like a fired up Poulan chainsaw when I sleep so I informed the polite and courteous youth to kick me in the ribs should the chainsaw light up during the night. I love it when a good raging grump is thwarted by good behavior.
Good night
===============================================
Sitting in line on the way into the boat we encountered a ton of wonderful people. People really seem to be at their best when they are away from home and on vacation. It was during this part of the trip that I realized there is a grandma gestapo. Man I tell you if you are a grandma don't worry about your grandbabies on a trip because your senior sisters have your back. It was obvious dollbaby was someones grandbaby and in possible danger so everywhere we went their was a fem with a touch of grey asking her all kinds of questions about her trip (and consequently giving me the hairy eyeball).
It was right before boarding that I ran into Advrider Gale BT and his lovely wife Sandy. They seemed impressed with the Cack so I immediately knew they had impeccable taste. Those two were positutely vibrating with 100 percent good mojo, so, much to their chagrin, I latched on to them immediately.
The boat loading guys arranged us in the bowels of the boat so that if CACK fell over it would do the most possible damage to the approximately $58,000 USD of handsome highly polished rolling stock surrounding my personal chancre cycle (the first time I heard the word chancre was when my dads buddy Bob called me a chancre sore on the ass of all humanity).
So long Canadian Jobs
So long Prince Rupert
Once we launched and headed up the inside passage everybody congregated in the cafeteria for some vittles. I was plenty glad to be off the bike for awhile and looking forward to kicking back and relaxing. DJ, the gregarious mail guy from Texas, and his lovely wife Theresa correctly assumed that my services as a shipboard raconteur could be bought with 12ozees so I commenced to regaling them with tales of daring do.
The players right to left
A) Lovely Theresa (Djs wife)
B) DJ
- Lovely Sandy
- Gale BT (the coach)
- Cantankerous Goldwing Wayne
We got done eating and with spirits at an all time high we retired to our stateroom.
I nearly got grumpy when a group of 30 teenagers showed up and threw their sleeping bags on the floor next to us. I immediately thought the worst and figured I was in for a night of giggling and fake fart noises but bless their hearts they all sat down and did some yoga type stretchs and meditation and quietly went off to sleep. I started getting a little self conscious on account of my old man floppy epiglotis (or undulating uvula or turgid tonsils, whatever little fleshy danglers there are in there) tends to make me sound like a fired up Poulan chainsaw when I sleep so I informed the polite and courteous youth to kick me in the ribs should the chainsaw light up during the night. I love it when a good raging grump is thwarted by good behavior.
Good night
===============================================
Laid back feet up cruisin
I wake up well rested for having slept on a steel floor. The deeeeeeep rumble of the ships engine reverberatin through the ships chassis pretty much put me into a coma and as I had no bruising on my ribcage I presume the Poulan never started or was so quiet that the sundry youths sleeping in my vacinity where acoustically unmolested. I am the first one up (being as I am still on eastern standard time and I am dang near little r russia). I slither on down to the cafeteria in all my glory and there is one guy there who has already tapped into the Java, my buddy Gold Wing Wayne. He tells me stories of his many years of Alaskan bush pilotry, I presume the lure of the adventurous life was worth it to him but as the years wear on I am thankful that I was able to procure comely female companionship and commence to begoting a triumvirate of reasonable offspring in a relatively stable setting. There is a lot to be said in favor getting up early on a sunny michigan morning and having a cup of coffee with the same woman that you have had for 26 years. I can do without the sun, without coffee, and without Michigan but I would be hard pressed to do without sweetthang.
Anywho Wayne has many stories, several of them no doubt have an element of truth to them and I feel obliged to respond in kind and the blah blah festival ramps up where it left off the day before, as the coach and Sandy join us it raises in volume and embellishment until I am sure Doll wants to jump into the churning propellers at the flat end of the boat.
We laze around the boat all day doing nothing but reading books and watching stuff like this go by.
I give the skipper alot of credit for getting this lumbering behemoth to fit through these little openings in the mountains.
The coach tells a riveting story about the sinking of the BC ferry somewhere along in here. Apparently their was a coed ferry driving team what commenced to conjugating while underway*, went off course and accidently hit some significant terrestrial feature at which point the boat ripped, took on water, ricocheted off into the middle of the channel and sank. Talk about interrupt us. It was his impression several people died in the incident so it is not necessarily a funny story. It does make my trademark mistyping of "O" instead of ZERO on a document seem to have a lot less gravity as far as work related attention to detail failures.
*the conjugal part of this story is entirely unsubstantiated rumor and a topic of rail leaning blah blah not necessarily fact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_North. I suspect that is why the two crew members refused to testify in the root cause investigation.
We stop in several small towns up the passage and mingle with the natives.
Prehistoric Nintendo Wii video games.
Hey where is the couch and the gamecube? How come they are not fat?
Boat proctologist
I initially took this photo as a somewhat condescending indictment of a persons judgement that would display a likeness of the son of god on the hood of his car. Then as time has past it occured to me that this is probably the last remaining 1985 Ford Escort on the planet that still runs. Which in and of itself is a miracle akin to Charleton Heston splitting the red sea in half in ancient egyptian times. Anyway any combination of old steel, Jesus and ductape will always get my attention.
Gristle Bare 1 Vermin 0
In a quiet and reflective moment the coach and myself do some quality rail leaning and I start to inquire as to his outlook on life. I peel back the first couple layers of my sanity and reveal the depths of my confusion pertaining to the time I have spent staggering around this planet. I get relatively worked up to the point of needing a nap. He takes it all in with quiet grace and a smile.
I think a brief review of my historic relations with coachs and sports is in order. I was a 6'4" 135lb freshman in high school that didn't have the coordination to clap and hit both hands. I was physically forced onto the freshman basketball team because of my height. As far as I can remember I was the only guy that never left the freshman team throughout high school. Mr dempsey the coach did a poor job hiding the mirth he felt during any of my encounters with a basketball. Our team only ever won one game in the three years that I played. I was a bench warmer on the worst basketball team in conference history. I was a capitol L loser on a team that took three years to get a W. As I was a relatively bookish child I understood that sports is a modern analog for the battle for survival. Sports traditionally seperated the weak from the strong in primitive cultures and set up the hierachy of power and wealth to be field tested in battle with man or beast. It was clear to me that in a primitive culture I was going to get shredded by a cougar or left back in the primitive village with the women being used as chattel for any sexually confused warrior. So I did the only thing I knew how to do I sat on the end of the bench with the gay guy with dress socks (his dad forced him to play basketball ideally to impose some kind of sexual reorientation, It didn't work) and made wisecracks at other peoples expense and by george I ended up getting proficient at it. The sense of humor I developed to survive in this situation fortunately was pivotal in my eventual acquisition of the afformention comely fem aka sweetthang. So late in year three we won a game with 1 second left, type A personality teamate Scott Parsons pissed himself and I quit competitive sports pretty much for good.
Carl with a K's cruise ship (I shit you not)
In a bizarre coincidence Carl with a K was on a Alaskan cruise with his wife celebrating their 25th anniversary.
And we passed them in the inside passage.
I get up from my post rant nap and am fairly calm. The coach and Sandy stroll by and I apologize for my intensity and confusion pre nap.
The words escape me but the coach laid out a very soothing line of verbage that settled me down immensly.
As usual his take on life is best paraphrased in a Roger Miller song.
Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
But you can be happy if you've a mind to
All ya gotta do is put your mind to it
Knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI-8h...eature=related
There ya have it Roger Miller ushered me into the dead racoon phase of the trip and the coach was there waiting to help me out in the end (with Roger Miller as his offensive coordinator).
For the first time in my life I see the importance of a good coach and I still cling to his positive attitude and message whenever the dead racoons start to scratchin at the screen door.
Thanks Coach,
Verm
====================================================================
Anywho Wayne has many stories, several of them no doubt have an element of truth to them and I feel obliged to respond in kind and the blah blah festival ramps up where it left off the day before, as the coach and Sandy join us it raises in volume and embellishment until I am sure Doll wants to jump into the churning propellers at the flat end of the boat.
We laze around the boat all day doing nothing but reading books and watching stuff like this go by.
I give the skipper alot of credit for getting this lumbering behemoth to fit through these little openings in the mountains.
The coach tells a riveting story about the sinking of the BC ferry somewhere along in here. Apparently their was a coed ferry driving team what commenced to conjugating while underway*, went off course and accidently hit some significant terrestrial feature at which point the boat ripped, took on water, ricocheted off into the middle of the channel and sank. Talk about interrupt us. It was his impression several people died in the incident so it is not necessarily a funny story. It does make my trademark mistyping of "O" instead of ZERO on a document seem to have a lot less gravity as far as work related attention to detail failures.
*the conjugal part of this story is entirely unsubstantiated rumor and a topic of rail leaning blah blah not necessarily fact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_North. I suspect that is why the two crew members refused to testify in the root cause investigation.
We stop in several small towns up the passage and mingle with the natives.
Prehistoric Nintendo Wii video games.
Hey where is the couch and the gamecube? How come they are not fat?
Boat proctologist
I initially took this photo as a somewhat condescending indictment of a persons judgement that would display a likeness of the son of god on the hood of his car. Then as time has past it occured to me that this is probably the last remaining 1985 Ford Escort on the planet that still runs. Which in and of itself is a miracle akin to Charleton Heston splitting the red sea in half in ancient egyptian times. Anyway any combination of old steel, Jesus and ductape will always get my attention.
Gristle Bare 1 Vermin 0
In a quiet and reflective moment the coach and myself do some quality rail leaning and I start to inquire as to his outlook on life. I peel back the first couple layers of my sanity and reveal the depths of my confusion pertaining to the time I have spent staggering around this planet. I get relatively worked up to the point of needing a nap. He takes it all in with quiet grace and a smile.
I think a brief review of my historic relations with coachs and sports is in order. I was a 6'4" 135lb freshman in high school that didn't have the coordination to clap and hit both hands. I was physically forced onto the freshman basketball team because of my height. As far as I can remember I was the only guy that never left the freshman team throughout high school. Mr dempsey the coach did a poor job hiding the mirth he felt during any of my encounters with a basketball. Our team only ever won one game in the three years that I played. I was a bench warmer on the worst basketball team in conference history. I was a capitol L loser on a team that took three years to get a W. As I was a relatively bookish child I understood that sports is a modern analog for the battle for survival. Sports traditionally seperated the weak from the strong in primitive cultures and set up the hierachy of power and wealth to be field tested in battle with man or beast. It was clear to me that in a primitive culture I was going to get shredded by a cougar or left back in the primitive village with the women being used as chattel for any sexually confused warrior. So I did the only thing I knew how to do I sat on the end of the bench with the gay guy with dress socks (his dad forced him to play basketball ideally to impose some kind of sexual reorientation, It didn't work) and made wisecracks at other peoples expense and by george I ended up getting proficient at it. The sense of humor I developed to survive in this situation fortunately was pivotal in my eventual acquisition of the afformention comely fem aka sweetthang. So late in year three we won a game with 1 second left, type A personality teamate Scott Parsons pissed himself and I quit competitive sports pretty much for good.
Carl with a K's cruise ship (I shit you not)
In a bizarre coincidence Carl with a K was on a Alaskan cruise with his wife celebrating their 25th anniversary.
And we passed them in the inside passage.
I get up from my post rant nap and am fairly calm. The coach and Sandy stroll by and I apologize for my intensity and confusion pre nap.
The words escape me but the coach laid out a very soothing line of verbage that settled me down immensly.
As usual his take on life is best paraphrased in a Roger Miller song.
Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd
But you can be happy if you've a mind to
All ya gotta do is put your mind to it
Knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI-8h...eature=related
There ya have it Roger Miller ushered me into the dead racoon phase of the trip and the coach was there waiting to help me out in the end (with Roger Miller as his offensive coordinator).
For the first time in my life I see the importance of a good coach and I still cling to his positive attitude and message whenever the dead racoons start to scratchin at the screen door.
Thanks Coach,
Verm
====================================================================
the release
I woke up again to the muffled rumblings of the big motors down below. As usual I was up way before everyone else and the sun had not managed to clear the mountains to the east but was emitting enough light, through the mist, to give the early morning scene a otherworldy glow. I was in pretty good spirits as I walked to the railing, on the top deck of the flat end of the boat, and commenced to leaning and reflecting. We had been inundated with warmth, love and affection for a couple of days and it was starting to drastically improve my spirits. As I leaned against the railing I was counting my many blessings, all of which were human (except one dog of which i am somewhat ambivelant). I was at peace for the first time in a long time.
As I stared into the churning water spitting out the back of the boat, a big killer whale did a full body, out of the water, Shamu display 75 yards astern. It was a show just for me. Do I wish I had a digital camera or video? Nah that was a moment for me and the whale and all the rest of y'all go find your own damn whale.
Finally my revery was broken by loud human voices as a 6foot 2inch tall rangy, mascara smeared, blond chick (mid 1990s college volleyball player type that was starting to go to seed) busted out on to the deck with her scrawny beat down boyfriend, she was a B-52 on a carpet F-bombing run. I felt sorry for the little feller she was tearing him to pieces she said all kinds of disgusting (anatomically impractical and hard to verify) things about him and his momma.
They both were hard on the juice and still in the middle of a "party". I hadn't seen them prior to this so I figure they must have got on in the middle of the night at Juneau. She berated him with such venom and flourish that I pulled up a chair and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Needless to say I counted one more blessing.
Eventually everyone else woke up and our little group of compadres went into the cafeteria to drink too much coffee and continued to regale each other with stories of our prior greatness. About the time I was fixin to have the vapors from too much caffiene Haines came into site.
The boat pulled up to the dock and we beat a hasty retreat. The boat spit me out the side like a sliver of barnwood out of a pus blister.*
* I would soon realize that I left my pine prop stick wedged up against the hull AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH
Our happy band of gypsys had a good breakfast at a mom and pop in Haines. We decided to stick together for a fur piece as we enjoyed one another. Even Grumpy gold wing wayne, when given the chance to bolt, hung out (if only to have someone to argue with). I had burned through nearly all my true stories and at least 55 percent of the false ones but I figured I still had at least a days worth left in me.
The Coach makes sure that his precision Bavarian beauty has precisely the right amount of air according to his digital tire pressure gauge as his Coloradian beauty waits patiently. Much meticularity. In the meantime I had forgotten that my bike had tires.
.
The red arrow of forboding.
Finally the age old rhetorical "does the bear dookey in the woods" question has been answered.
The answer is, no they do it on the side of the road
This was a cage that the canadien government put up to corral people that stumble out of RVs. If it weren't for the attractive wolmanized handrail the government correctly assumes your average american citizen will not realize there is an attractive scene at hand.
For that matter it could be a gristle bare bait pile
Semi possibly lethal situation number 325a Grumps, Coach and myself were haulin ass toward Haines Junction hot on the tail of a cutey pie from the boat in a Ford Focus/Escort she was a couple hunderd yards ahead and she pulled over. I paid no never mind and blasted past her in the right tire track. I looked over to see if everything was all right and nearly let out a brown plume of toxic exhaust as I spied a gristle BAre in front of her car. TEN FEET TO MY RIGHT
The scenario blasted right through my nerve pills and let go an entire flock of hummingbirds inside my ribcage.
Dollbaby seems unphased. I am not sure she understands we are tier 2 predators (and slower than the tier ones on foot).
Cack attacks Klaune Lake, yukon with the dynamic duo aboard
Fortunately I had tons of weight behind the back wheel so the gravel roads were no prob for the cackster. The frost heaves made alot of noise when my suspension would top and bottom out (sometimes leave the ground). Somewhere in here a frost heave chucked my laminated trucker atlas off into the tundra (unbeknownst to me) and really agitated me.
The high cost of fuel had left most of the rv's in the lower 48 so there was very little traffic. The downside is that most of the little fuel stops along the way were either hanging on by a thread or closed. The attendants at the stops didn't even really know if the next one down the road was open. So basically the rule is get gas at every possible gas station because the next one on the map may not be there.
We finally pull into Tok Alaska in the evening and the blah blah blah gets reved back up pretty good. I am a genius I was hoping to get out in the wilderness and show dollbaby some bonaroo nightime stars from horizon to horizon. I always wondered why they call this the land of the midnight sun.
There is tons of ADVRIDER traffic on the alcan but I largely hide my bike as I am afraid if anyone recognized me it would trigger an exponential amount of gib flapping and drive dollbaby insane. Plus I don't really have a BMW GSA so I didn't want to risk further Wayne like derision.
11pm bedtime and no sign of the sun going down The sun is nearly due north of me in this picture and it freaks my sense of direction out.
Good night
===================================================================
As I stared into the churning water spitting out the back of the boat, a big killer whale did a full body, out of the water, Shamu display 75 yards astern. It was a show just for me. Do I wish I had a digital camera or video? Nah that was a moment for me and the whale and all the rest of y'all go find your own damn whale.
Finally my revery was broken by loud human voices as a 6foot 2inch tall rangy, mascara smeared, blond chick (mid 1990s college volleyball player type that was starting to go to seed) busted out on to the deck with her scrawny beat down boyfriend, she was a B-52 on a carpet F-bombing run. I felt sorry for the little feller she was tearing him to pieces she said all kinds of disgusting (anatomically impractical and hard to verify) things about him and his momma.
They both were hard on the juice and still in the middle of a "party". I hadn't seen them prior to this so I figure they must have got on in the middle of the night at Juneau. She berated him with such venom and flourish that I pulled up a chair and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Needless to say I counted one more blessing.
Eventually everyone else woke up and our little group of compadres went into the cafeteria to drink too much coffee and continued to regale each other with stories of our prior greatness. About the time I was fixin to have the vapors from too much caffiene Haines came into site.
The boat pulled up to the dock and we beat a hasty retreat. The boat spit me out the side like a sliver of barnwood out of a pus blister.*
* I would soon realize that I left my pine prop stick wedged up against the hull AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH
Our happy band of gypsys had a good breakfast at a mom and pop in Haines. We decided to stick together for a fur piece as we enjoyed one another. Even Grumpy gold wing wayne, when given the chance to bolt, hung out (if only to have someone to argue with). I had burned through nearly all my true stories and at least 55 percent of the false ones but I figured I still had at least a days worth left in me.
The Coach makes sure that his precision Bavarian beauty has precisely the right amount of air according to his digital tire pressure gauge as his Coloradian beauty waits patiently. Much meticularity. In the meantime I had forgotten that my bike had tires.
.The red arrow of forboding.
Finally the age old rhetorical "does the bear dookey in the woods" question has been answered.
The answer is, no they do it on the side of the road
This was a cage that the canadien government put up to corral people that stumble out of RVs. If it weren't for the attractive wolmanized handrail the government correctly assumes your average american citizen will not realize there is an attractive scene at hand.
For that matter it could be a gristle bare bait pile
Semi possibly lethal situation number 325a Grumps, Coach and myself were haulin ass toward Haines Junction hot on the tail of a cutey pie from the boat in a Ford Focus/Escort she was a couple hunderd yards ahead and she pulled over. I paid no never mind and blasted past her in the right tire track. I looked over to see if everything was all right and nearly let out a brown plume of toxic exhaust as I spied a gristle BAre in front of her car. TEN FEET TO MY RIGHT
The scenario blasted right through my nerve pills and let go an entire flock of hummingbirds inside my ribcage.
Dollbaby seems unphased. I am not sure she understands we are tier 2 predators (and slower than the tier ones on foot).
Cack attacks Klaune Lake, yukon with the dynamic duo aboard
Fortunately I had tons of weight behind the back wheel so the gravel roads were no prob for the cackster. The frost heaves made alot of noise when my suspension would top and bottom out (sometimes leave the ground). Somewhere in here a frost heave chucked my laminated trucker atlas off into the tundra (unbeknownst to me) and really agitated me.
The high cost of fuel had left most of the rv's in the lower 48 so there was very little traffic. The downside is that most of the little fuel stops along the way were either hanging on by a thread or closed. The attendants at the stops didn't even really know if the next one down the road was open. So basically the rule is get gas at every possible gas station because the next one on the map may not be there.
We finally pull into Tok Alaska in the evening and the blah blah blah gets reved back up pretty good. I am a genius I was hoping to get out in the wilderness and show dollbaby some bonaroo nightime stars from horizon to horizon. I always wondered why they call this the land of the midnight sun.
There is tons of ADVRIDER traffic on the alcan but I largely hide my bike as I am afraid if anyone recognized me it would trigger an exponential amount of gib flapping and drive dollbaby insane. Plus I don't really have a BMW GSA so I didn't want to risk further Wayne like derision.
11pm bedtime and no sign of the sun going down The sun is nearly due north of me in this picture and it freaks my sense of direction out.
Good night
===================================================================
Terminus/Finis/el extremo
We wake up, eat breakfast and start packing to head out. I realize I am dangerously close to running out of stories or worse yet accidently repeating one and doll is sick to death of hearing about my garage sale motorcycles (I can tell by the way her forehead slams into her biscuits and gravy whenever she hears the dulcet tones of my deep sexy baritone voice), so we decide to split off from the group as we only have 400 +/- miles left in the trip.
Good bye Wayne (he is probably out in the tundra arguing with a yak about how his coat is warmer)
Bye Sandy and Coach, we both love you and hope to see you again soon.
Wayne did an old stinky bush pilot fart at the Texaco
A nice looking piece of machinery probably made near my big fat mansion by my moms uncle Kenny.
A Harley in its natural environment
One thing I like about these places that are in the middle of nowhere is they are economically fringe elements. They cling to the boundries of human society in a grey region where they can survive and make some money but there isn't enough to lure big wall street chain corporate types into action. So when you go to "Fast Eddies" chances are there is a guy named Eddie involved and when you buy a meal there he and his kids reap the profits bless his heart. Also their isn't enough people to profitably split up into age groups and give other options so you see old people hanging out with young people. At least until they get old enough to move to the city and work at Dennys.
Dollbaby doing some subartic introspectin
We cruise 150 miles or so and stop for gas and coffee at a little log cabin/all around store and a little girl comes up to us as we are sitting at the picnic table eating. I figure something is wrong with this kid, she has lived in the bush all her life and doesn't know any better than to come up and start talking with strangers. She is like the penguins on Antartica when the first humans arrived they didn't recognize humans as a threat so they would just stand there while the Antartic explorin guy would just walk over to them and wack them on the head. I started thinkin what I possibly have here is a primitive untainted unsocialized feral child (like I was on the farm) that may have never even watched TV. I felt like Jock Kustow musta felt when he found some rare ass no pigment havin, strange phosphorescent light emitin, deep water puffer fish.
I may have stumbled on the last natural kid in North America!!!!!
Before I could leap into action and get her stuffed into a cage and sent to the Field Museum in Chicago, Doll politely asked her, her name at which point she replied "Hannah Montana".
__________________==========================Good bye Wayne (he is probably out in the tundra arguing with a yak about how his coat is warmer)
Bye Sandy and Coach, we both love you and hope to see you again soon.
Wayne did an old stinky bush pilot fart at the Texaco
A nice looking piece of machinery probably made near my big fat mansion by my moms uncle Kenny.
A Harley in its natural environment
One thing I like about these places that are in the middle of nowhere is they are economically fringe elements. They cling to the boundries of human society in a grey region where they can survive and make some money but there isn't enough to lure big wall street chain corporate types into action. So when you go to "Fast Eddies" chances are there is a guy named Eddie involved and when you buy a meal there he and his kids reap the profits bless his heart. Also their isn't enough people to profitably split up into age groups and give other options so you see old people hanging out with young people. At least until they get old enough to move to the city and work at Dennys.
Dollbaby doing some subartic introspectin
We cruise 150 miles or so and stop for gas and coffee at a little log cabin/all around store and a little girl comes up to us as we are sitting at the picnic table eating. I figure something is wrong with this kid, she has lived in the bush all her life and doesn't know any better than to come up and start talking with strangers. She is like the penguins on Antartica when the first humans arrived they didn't recognize humans as a threat so they would just stand there while the Antartic explorin guy would just walk over to them and wack them on the head. I started thinkin what I possibly have here is a primitive untainted unsocialized feral child (like I was on the farm) that may have never even watched TV. I felt like Jock Kustow musta felt when he found some rare ass no pigment havin, strange phosphorescent light emitin, deep water puffer fish.
I may have stumbled on the last natural kid in North America!!!!!
Before I could leap into action and get her stuffed into a cage and sent to the Field Museum in Chicago, Doll politely asked her, her name at which point she replied "Hannah Montana".
Frostbit in Eagle River
We continued on down the road toward Eagle River and I saw this Big Footed Varmint in the road and it wasn't nothin but a dead animal, I have made some progress. I am motoring southwest and hit a huge frostheave both tires leave the ground and upon my reentry into the asphaltosphere there was a loud report as my phantom suspension went to metal detents. This caused my canned goods in my dash to exit the vehicle causing much consternation to the harley guys following behind me as they threaded their way through spinning metal cylinders full of fruit cocktail and baked beans. That will teach them to tailgate.
My hair (whats left of it) had been botherin me since Oildale so we pulled into Hilda's barber shop in Eagle River.
At this point I can't find Subybaja who has generously offered to store cack so as a back up plan I ask these guys if they know anywhere I can stash the beast and without skipping a beat everyone in the place said "My Place" I think I like the people in this state. I ended up calling fellow advrider Frostbit out of the blue and asked him if I could camp in his yard. He said sure no prob.
We motored on up his driveway and were treated to tons of hospitality. Frostbit and his wife ML are craftspeople of the highest order (finish carpenters by trade) and everything in their home was classy, well done and they did it all themselves. They even have a studio where they do all kinds of cool melted glass creations. I am glad Dollbaby got to see the results of attention to detail and craftsmanship, qualities that are sorely lacking in my life and America in general.
Frosty putting his little bit of his funksoul into the mix.
His brother and nephew showed up and we spent the evening sitting around a cackling fire in their back yard telling stories.
These are good people.
Good night
===========================================
My hair (whats left of it) had been botherin me since Oildale so we pulled into Hilda's barber shop in Eagle River.
At this point I can't find Subybaja who has generously offered to store cack so as a back up plan I ask these guys if they know anywhere I can stash the beast and without skipping a beat everyone in the place said "My Place" I think I like the people in this state. I ended up calling fellow advrider Frostbit out of the blue and asked him if I could camp in his yard. He said sure no prob.
We motored on up his driveway and were treated to tons of hospitality. Frostbit and his wife ML are craftspeople of the highest order (finish carpenters by trade) and everything in their home was classy, well done and they did it all themselves. They even have a studio where they do all kinds of cool melted glass creations. I am glad Dollbaby got to see the results of attention to detail and craftsmanship, qualities that are sorely lacking in my life and America in general.
Frosty putting his little bit of his funksoul into the mix.
His brother and nephew showed up and we spent the evening sitting around a cackling fire in their back yard telling stories.
These are good people.
Good night
===========================================
Adios
We woke up to a good hot breakfast, home cooked by the Frostbits. Come to find out his family came from a small town near my original home place in the thumb of Michigan. We bid our teary farewells, I wrapped doll in 4 layers of bubblewrap and coated her with truck bed liner for safety (does that make you less nervous Big Bend?) and motored over to a state park and nature center that is just down the the street. Our time on this trip is drawing up pretty short so we do some off motorcycle antics.
Yes Doll these guys are local and on the path out back.
I try to divert dolls attention from this sign as she is the offspring of a bench warmer.
Can you spot the German tourists?
Hemlock Hemorrhoid
Your average scene just a couple of miles out the back of Frostbits house
I posted this picture upside down to give sticklers for detail something to find and to illustrate how still the water was.
We finally pull into Anchorage and get ahold of Subybaja for bike storage and a ride to the airport. We had a little time to kill so we halfheartedly moped around downtown buying souvenirs and hanging out. I like this town because it looks like the wild nature beats the hell out of it yearly so it is a little raggedy around the edges. It gives you the impression that human incursions into this land are hard fought and tenuous and any gains in civilization can be easily lost. That is alright I am not a big fan of civilization anyway.
Your average American freeway with your average moose in a standoff with a minivan. Which is unnatural, the moose or the freeway?
But hes got hiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh hopes, hes got hiiiiiiiiiiiigh hopes
Hes got high apple pie, in the sky hopes
Finally we head over to Subybaja's house and we go out to dinner together. AkDuc and Suby's girlfriend show up and we have a good meal at one of the local microbrews. At this point I am irritated that I don't have more time to spend with these blokes as I have read AkDucs ride reports and I am deeply interested in the native culture that he comes from. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the old people from these cultures could shed some light on stuff that needs some light shed on it.
Left to right Subybaja, his girl, AKDuc, dollbaby, george clooney
AKDuc asks me about my trip and I say “ironically the grander the vistas the more important the people became”
I think that was the fundamental vibe of the trip. By the time I got to Anchorage I had been assaulted with so much scenery and twisty roads I had become numb and exhausted, I cherished the warm smiling people I met more than the next grand vista.
We have spent 17 days on the road (I am exhausted) and have our first raindrops fall 1 hour before we leave. It sets an appropriately melancholy mood for the end of a dream trip. Dollbaby has not uttered one single word of complaint I love her so deeply and am so proud of her on so many levels, scholar, athlete and all round really tough chick.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Old girl knows the routine, out comes the rat poison to stuff in her crevasses to prevent her from cheating on me over the winter ( i am a jealous lover) and a imprecise and unknown amount of Stabil into her gizzard. The D-Con implies a future together that we both suspect may not exist. I stumble through the weeds, I can't look back, things go blurry.
From the arizona deserts to a 6am monsoon on a bridge over lake Pontchetrain by new orlins.
From Late night highway blast outside Sturgis to a late night at deals gap when we thought IdiotDan was dead.
From Willie Nelsons fourth of july picnic in Fortworth to Detroit suburban rush hour traffic
From rides around the back yard with preschool drifter and doll baby to exotic trips to Mexico and the subartic as high school students.
From Campfires in Canada with friends that have passed on to giving little nieces and nephews rides down the huron river road while they grin from ear to ear
"Unkle Vermin this makes me feel so alive, rebellious and free, does it do that to you?"
"Yup, Pretty much Ryan"
Adios mi corazon
__________________Yes Doll these guys are local and on the path out back.
I try to divert dolls attention from this sign as she is the offspring of a bench warmer.
Can you spot the German tourists?
Hemlock Hemorrhoid
Your average scene just a couple of miles out the back of Frostbits house
I posted this picture upside down to give sticklers for detail something to find and to illustrate how still the water was.
We finally pull into Anchorage and get ahold of Subybaja for bike storage and a ride to the airport. We had a little time to kill so we halfheartedly moped around downtown buying souvenirs and hanging out. I like this town because it looks like the wild nature beats the hell out of it yearly so it is a little raggedy around the edges. It gives you the impression that human incursions into this land are hard fought and tenuous and any gains in civilization can be easily lost. That is alright I am not a big fan of civilization anyway.
Your average American freeway with your average moose in a standoff with a minivan. Which is unnatural, the moose or the freeway?
But hes got hiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh hopes, hes got hiiiiiiiiiiiigh hopes
Hes got high apple pie, in the sky hopes
Finally we head over to Subybaja's house and we go out to dinner together. AkDuc and Suby's girlfriend show up and we have a good meal at one of the local microbrews. At this point I am irritated that I don't have more time to spend with these blokes as I have read AkDucs ride reports and I am deeply interested in the native culture that he comes from. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the old people from these cultures could shed some light on stuff that needs some light shed on it.
Left to right Subybaja, his girl, AKDuc, dollbaby, george clooney
AKDuc asks me about my trip and I say “ironically the grander the vistas the more important the people became”
I think that was the fundamental vibe of the trip. By the time I got to Anchorage I had been assaulted with so much scenery and twisty roads I had become numb and exhausted, I cherished the warm smiling people I met more than the next grand vista.
We have spent 17 days on the road (I am exhausted) and have our first raindrops fall 1 hour before we leave. It sets an appropriately melancholy mood for the end of a dream trip. Dollbaby has not uttered one single word of complaint I love her so deeply and am so proud of her on so many levels, scholar, athlete and all round really tough chick.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Old girl knows the routine, out comes the rat poison to stuff in her crevasses to prevent her from cheating on me over the winter ( i am a jealous lover) and a imprecise and unknown amount of Stabil into her gizzard. The D-Con implies a future together that we both suspect may not exist. I stumble through the weeds, I can't look back, things go blurry.
From the arizona deserts to a 6am monsoon on a bridge over lake Pontchetrain by new orlins.
From Late night highway blast outside Sturgis to a late night at deals gap when we thought IdiotDan was dead.
From Willie Nelsons fourth of july picnic in Fortworth to Detroit suburban rush hour traffic
From rides around the back yard with preschool drifter and doll baby to exotic trips to Mexico and the subartic as high school students.
From Campfires in Canada with friends that have passed on to giving little nieces and nephews rides down the huron river road while they grin from ear to ear
"Unkle Vermin this makes me feel so alive, rebellious and free, does it do that to you?"
"Yup, Pretty much Ryan"
Adios mi corazon
re-entry/Vermin goes to ground
ahendepe shudders as he regains consciousness, he vaguely remembers a strange dream with a purdy young lady, mountains, gristle bares and killer whales, he is driving a car down a familiar road into the sunrise.
He recognizes the temple of consumption.
He has driven by this pyramid of putrescence approximately 8820 times, he notices the linear mathematical relationship between his number of passes, morning and night, and the height of the dump. He has prospered.
For the seventeenth year he fearfully, humbly asks to participate in the grocery grab. He approaches the machine, will it accept him? Will he get to feverishly paw at the little keys for his food pellet yet again?
DENIED
The old racoon has successfully herded his kits to the double yellow lines in the center of the road. Their eyes glow hi viz in the glare of the oncoming headlights. Cars and semi's go wailing past, they pause to catch their breath as the windblasts from the trucks ruffles their fur.
========================================
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