The Old Priest Grade

It is called Old Priest Grade. The name might be as such since it recalls the last person you might call out to when you begin your ascent, or descent, of this freakish piece of road, in central California. Call it what you will, it boggles the mind to think that it was the only way to get through the area for many years.
A little research shows me that the Old Priest Grade is about 2 miles long. I know it is steep because I navigated it, with my cart threatening to pull me down the entire way. It was as awful as any experience I had on my entire trip, and in the end cost me a big toenail on my left foot, from the intense pressure caused by my foot being forcefully jammed up into the toe of my shoe for so long. A real treat, that.
For many years cars and trucks have gone over the side as their drivers and/or brakes have worn out. Finally, several years back, a new road, ironically called New Priest Grade, was built alongside the Old Priest Grade, but three times as long and a third as steep, winding all over the place, and not much faster than the old road, actually taking much longer due to the distance and the fact that because of the zillion turns and twists drivers cant drive much faster than on the old road.
As I kept descending, I wondered at the numerous small pull offs and the water bottles that were there. At one stop, I notice that there were two water jugs, full, and with a small bag of Skittles taped to the sides. One also bore a note: “FREE SKITTLES—Sorry your car broke down. Call me…” and there was a phone number. I decided that the Skittles looked too enticing, but the water was a bit too off color for my taste. I also took the note. A call to the number on the note got a voicemail box. I left a message, which was not returned, until today. It turns out that a man named Austin and three passengers broke down or overheated on their way up the hill. Apparently, at the pull-off they discovered water, which alleviated their distressed radiator. They, as a group, decided to leave the water and Skittles as a "Pay it forward" gift.
Researching online later told me that the hill was literally a killer, of both cars and people. Lowlanders who had no experience driving in the mountains would routinely and sometimes tragically burn their brakes completely off and there were a lot of deadly rear end collisions at the lower part of the hill, or cars would go off the side of the road, and fatalities occurred that way.
So, a couple hours later, I made it to the bottom. The pervasive smell of brakes burning was intense. There were no accidents, no one died, a toe-nail would eventually be the only loss, and I got a couple of free bags of Skittles. Not such a bad road after all, I’d say.

What a load of BS...

Beware of BS
Snaggletooth Becky is her name
Lying, scamming, ripping off friends is her claim to fame
Brown-nosing her way into your house
And when you're not looking she's sneaky as a mouse
Years and years she's been on the run
Stealing from friends, it's all just the same
Sooner or later she'll get her just due
No more crying or lying, conniving or snitching
Shoving in shame like it was a game
Everything's quiet now, for she's disappeared
Though this time it appears she won't reappear
Cause fake, phony Becky
Was never here.


Well, someone in San Andreas, California, has it in for a woman named Becky.
Or maybe they don't.
I saw the above printed out on a piece of paper, and stapled to a telephone pole, in a residential area near the library, where I had spent a night camped in a courtyard/patio.
I read the paper twice. Wondered aloud who the hell Becky was, and what she had done to warrant such a loving tribute. I pictured a drugged out woman, living life by moving from friend to friend, leeching from them, and then moving on when the fan got hit. It appears that Becky might have finally been arrested, or worse, and more sinister, murdered. The words,"This time it appears she wont reappear" ring mighty suspicious to me. Sounds like drastic action has been taken.
On the other hand, this might be a load of malarkey. "Fake, phony Becky was never here"? Hmmmm. Was she? Or wasn't she?

Except.

It was a typical bus ride, until the voice behind me started to become louder than the rest of the voices. It started to increase in volume, and in the number of expletives, until it became the only sound on the bus. Everyone else stopped talking and was focused on the one way conversation.
"Look, "N-word." I ain't playin'. When I see you I got something for you...Im gonna hit you right in your mouth."
It went on, and what I figured I was hearing was a street rant from one guy on the bus to another of his gang, or posse, talking trash and threatening violence and retaliation. Strong stuff indeed, and not appropriate for the situation, but in a perfect world.... The bus driver heard it and was about to make a comment over the loudspeaker, when the words, "When your grandmother tells you to take out the trash, you do it, "n-word". Do you hear me?"
The driver paused, and it became obvious that this was a parent, a caring one, despite the threats of violence, who only wanted his son to listen to his grandmother, a woman who had obviously done a lot for the boy, emotionally and financially. "When your granny tells you to take out the garbage, you take it out. You understand me? You're almost sixteen years old and almost a man, and you know better than to disrespect my mama, your grandma, when she tells you to do something."
At one point, a young man of nineteen who was seated next to me, and in front of the man on the phone, spoke up, when the expletives were at their worst, and said, "Hey, man, there are kids on this bus." The man was quickly able to change gears, focus on the young man, and in a calm voice, said, "Please dont say anything when I am talking to my son." The young man backed out of the conversation, and it wound down, with the father telling his son, not yet a man, that he loved him and that he knew what the right thing to do was.
It made me think about parenting, and of a conversation I had had with the young man next to me, a dialogue that had occurred a bit earlier. He told me he was from a city in Alabama, where he lived with his parents. He was nineteen years old, and suffered from a disease like scleroderma or Palmoplantar keratodermas, which gives his hands and feet thick callous-like skin and underlying nerve trouble. It is enough of a disorder to warrant a disability, though, and the young man's parents had filed for disability on his behalf early on. Except.
Except that they were using the money he received, for his disability, to buy drugs ("everything in the book"), as he related to me. His father is hooked on crack, his mother meth and other drugs. Sounds like an ideal situation for a young man to fall between the cracks and into a life of drugs and apathy. Except.
Except that this young man wants more out of life than a constant high and of being a money tree for addicted parents.
He put a stop to the disability checks. He struck out on the road to meet his first girlfriend. She lives in Oregon. He lives in Alabama. They have a slim chance of making it work, given the distance involved. I know that.I think he knows that too, but he is making the effort. He wants to make something out of his life. He does not want the disability albatross around his neck. Because of his situation, he never graduated school or got his GED. He could be headed for a life of destitution and despair. Except.
Except, despite all of the obstacles in his way, he has the desire. Despite being small in stature, he had the resolve to speak up against the angry dad in the seats behind us. Despite the distance involved between him and his lady in Oregon, he has made the effort. Despite the pressure from his parents to continue being their personal ATM, he has managed to do things his way, and still manages to maintain a relationship with them...maybe the blood ties will be stronger than the chemicals that are polluting their thinking. They have a special kid there, and will see that, in time. Because their son wants more. And I think he will get it. It won't be easy, but as the cliche goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." This young man has taken several giant leaps, and I wish him well. It was a pleasure meeting a young man named Justin, on a long bus ride, one day in August. It also was a different type of pleasure to hear a man, a black man, whose race has been so excoriated for having male "parents" who just plain don't give a shit, actually give a shit about his son, and how he grows up. Maybe there is more hope in this world than I thought.

They shuffle in.....Greyhound at night....ewwwww.

They shuffle in. Big, small, fat, skinny, clean, dirty, ugly, pretty, sane, and not so sane. They are the denizens of the night---those who ride the Greyhound buses to places far and wide, being dumped and unloaded like cattle at the station in Sacramento, California. There, they will sit, or lie down, or pace the floor, or walk around outside and smoke cigarette after cigarette, waiting for their connecting bus, or their ride, or any number of other possibilities.
At three AM, few of them are wide awake. They drop clothing,food, blankets, and after a few steps further, realize it. That is when they sluggishly halt and try to muster up the energy to back up and pick up their detritus. Sometimes, they drop more items as they try to pick up the one they originally dropped. Sometimes they just say a silent, “Screw it” and keep walking.
They all have one thing in common, though. They are all going somewhere. I am one of them. I am waiting for four hours for a bus to Los Angeles, where I will get dumped for a six hour wait, then I will board a bus headed for El Paso, Texas.
Im heading home to Tampa. I walked across this big old country, from Tybee Island, Georgia, where I left on the Ides of March, and I walked, bled, crawled, and occasionally rode short distances until I finally made it to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning hours of July 31. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, and I had a wonderful time doing it. As physicists are fond of saying, though, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and sadly that holds true for my situation: as great as the getting here was, the leaving here is a miserable and lonely existence, and it does not help that the Greyhound Bus company seems to hold their bread and butter (aka their passengers) in about as much disdain as is possible. Perhaps they know they are the only game in town for low cost cross country transportation, but it does not give them the right to mistreat people in cruel and hurtful ways. I have heard drivers be insulting to passengers, threatening to throw them off the bus for no apparent reason. I have also been treated as badly by a driver in San Francisco, who, with a wink and a nod to the baggage handler who could have placed my luggage under the bus, then turned his back to me and boarded the bus I was supposed to catch, closing the door in my face, and driving away. His actions resulted in my missing the bus, having to pay an extra fifteen bucks, and then having to wait eight hours for the next bus. There is a spot in Hell reserved for that son of a bitch, and I hope I am driving the bus on the day he is due to go there. Ill make sure he catches HIS bus. Count on it.
In the meantime, Sacramento is a sluggish and dull station….three hours to go.

The aftermath....

So, a few days later, and I am in Mammoth Lakes again. Resting as I journey back to the east coast, and the sunny climes of Tampa. The pain and swelling in my foot have not gone away and I finally had to do something that I never do without a bit of coercion---I went to seek medical attention at the E.R. There, the nice staff of Mammoth Hospital checked me out, a bit skeptical at first of a guy who claimed to have walked across the country--but who were convinced by a tough line of questioning and my answers.
X-rays revealed my foot to be broken--a small fracture, nothing too major, and with a bit of Advil and not putting too much weight on it I should be fine. The swelling will go away, and I'll be ready to do some other crazy stunt in the near future.
There remains the physical exhaustion. I do declare: the Greyhound bus service that I have railed about previously...is worse than ever. Leaving San Francisco, the bus broke down in Oakland, and we had to wait for 90 minutes for a replacement, only to be doubled up due to Oakland passengers being added to the mix. It was a nightmarish and uncomfortable 6 hour ride to Reno.
I missed my first bus--missed, they say, because my cart and luggage were not checked in properly, and while I stood there with my checked in tags in my hand, the driver turned on his heel, entered the bus and closed the door in my face, leaving me standing there, and prompting the security guard on duty to shake his head and exclaim, "Man, that was f--ked up."
Even that didnt bother me as much as the apparent disdain that the service has for their bread and butter, which is to say, their passengers.
But, in the end, it is a grimace and bear it type situation. So I do. I came too far to let a bunch of malcontents ruin my experience.

Like the man says.........

One of the many things that have been thrown my way since the beginnings of this walk across the United States was this: “Oh, someone came through here last month doing the same thing as you.”
Well, I beg to differ, but I dare say that while someone may well have been walking across the US for a charity or a cause, or just for a lark, it wasn’t the same as what I am doing, nor is what I am doing the same as anyone else. We all did what we do for our own reasons. There was a guy I heard about from a few people. He toted a cross on his back, with a wheel on the bottom to make it a bit easier to roll along. It was said that as he went across the bible belt, he almost literally had people throwing money at him. Was that his intention? I have no idea. Earlier there was the brave and talented Rachel Milano and her almost half ton wagon that she pushed all the way from Savannah, Georgia to Atlanta, getting sideswiped by a truck in the process. She was making folks aware of the awful stigma that child abuse carries with it for the victims of that heinous act, and was and is herself a survivor.
My favorite was told to me by Bob George, a retired teacher in Dodge City, Kansas, who related a story of a man who walked across the states wearing a shirt that said ”Live Life.” The man had had a son, but his son’s demons caused him to take his own life one day, suddenly and violently. As a way of grieving, his father decided to make that trip with that slogan printed on his shirt. It was how he dealt with his grief. It was a way for him to figure out his son’s death, and his life, and to come to terms with both.
Life. A short word, but all encompassing. We are born with no guarantees save one: that we will die. What we do in the scant time between the two biggest events of our existence is up to us, and it behooves us to make the best use of that time that we can, and enjoy every sandwich, as the late Warren Zevon said, upon finding out he was in stage 4 of a cancer that took him shortly thereafter. Don’t wait til you have cancer. Enjoy every sandwich, and cookie, and breath of air, NOW. Do something small, then do something huge, but do something. Sitting idly is your choice, of course, but then, as the darkness is closing in, you have no right to regret anything . Don ’t wait for someone tell you to get out there. Just do it. Do it for yourself. Do it to honor someone like the great Harry Chapin, as I did. Do it to honor your dead son, as the man with the shirt did.
I was thinking of that man today as I walked up the path to the Golden Gate Bridge. I think a lot about the bridge anyway, and a documentary that was made about it several years ago. The movie was not about the physical location or structure , but about how it becomes the location for a couple of dozen suicides a year. The downtrodden simply come out, walk on the pedestrian footpath, climb up and over the railing and step off…
The film is about those jumpers. The cameras that the filmmakers set up preserved the last moments of life for two dozen people that year, including a man named Gene Sprague. Gene was a misfit of society-- thirty plus years old, looking not unlike Joey Ramone, long black hair, black leather jacket and shades and that general look of one of society’s disenfranchised souls. He had no job and had left applications all over town, to no avail. He would visit the bridge frequently. He would lean on the railing, starng out into the bay. Sometimes he would pace back and forth, deep in thought, and then leave after a while.
On May 11, 2004, he left for good, climbing the railing with his back to the water, standing straight up for a second, and then, with arms tucked close, fell backward, allowing gravity to take him to oblivion. It was spellbinding and sad and pointless.
His family told the filmmakers that the next day they got a call from a prospective employer offering Gene a job. Too little, too late.
I was fascinated with Gene Sprague, and his decision. I wanted to go the place where he chose to make his last act in such a public way. So I went.
Ironically, there was a Relay for Life marathon going on, on the bridge. Sunday, July 31, 2011. The coincidence, like so many others on this walk, was almost too much to believe, again.
I’ve never been suicidal, except for one time a long time ago. I never got close to committing the act, because thoughts of my recently born daughter came into my head and the realization that I might not get to know her and watch her grow up very quickly pushed any such notions out of my head. The fact that I still do not know her very well at age 28 doesn’t matter. There is still time.
So Gene Sprague chose May 11, 2004 for the day he would take himself out. Ironically that same date is someone’s birthday. In fact, it is the birthday of many people. They choose to celebrate life, not end it. My friend Brian recently ushered himself out of this world as well, so thoughts of the selfishness of suicide have been on my mind a lot as well, in recent times. A permanent solution to a temporary problem, as Alex Bennett, ironically a longtime San Francisco radio personality, calls it.
So I walked onto the bridge with all of the dark thoughts of Gene Sprague in mind. I found the spot where he took his final bow. I even had my picture taken there. I did not see Gene’s ghost anywhere, did not hear the anguished final cries of others who took that way out, and did not shed a tear for anyone. Not Gene, not Brian. No one. I actually smiled because of what I saw and heard.
What I did hear and see were thousands of beautiful people running a relay for life. Celebrating life and encouraging people to do the same. Life. Live. Living.
As the great Liverpool philosopher John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” How right he was.
As the man in the t-shirt said.
“Live life.”
How right they both were.
I’ve stepped out on a very long limb, inspired by the spirit of a man who adored life and worked to make others lives better, Mr. Harry Chapin. At the same time I was chasing the ghost of a man who didn’t treasure that which he had. I’ve learned that life is what you make it. Life is too short to even consider an early exit. So, Gene Sprague and his ghost? I don’t need ‘em in my life.
Nope.
Not anymore.
Live life.
Peace.

A Madness to their Meth? Odd...

I spent three days in Lodi, California. It seemed like three weeks. Three awful weeks. I was sick, probably with food poisoning.
I met a lot of people while I was sick, which was an odd experience because I spent most of my time in the room, staring at my eyelids. Not once did I turn the television on. I did cross the street to the gas station a few times, and my presence at the motel was duly noted by a certain group of people who happened to see my comings and goings. My scruffy appearance ( I do look pretty rough at this point, I must say) probably prompted one of them to talk to me.
“You need anything?”
Me: “Like?”
“Crank”
Me: “Hell no.”
Okay.
Me: “Wait, can I ask you a question?”
I proceeded to tell the individual of my walk, my writing project, and asked for permission to sit in while he and his little circle did their thing in another room in the same motel. He said to go to my room and he would let me know. I went to my room and waited. For a while day and half I waited, sick and wondering if the question had been either dismissed or not remembered. Then came a knock on the door. nI opened it and there stood “Eric”, and he just said, “You still wanna hang out with us? It’s okay but no pictures and you cant use our real names.” I agreed and got up, following him all of a hundred feet.
We entered the room that he and his girlfriend/wife Amy lived in a temporary situation . It was set up oddly and there was a second small room where Amy’s little boy, Ryan, slept. That’s right, her 3 year old little adorable boy.
“Do you want some?” he asked me. I politely but firmly declined his offer. He already knew I wasn’t interested in any of what he was offering me—crystal meth, or crank, as it is sometimes called. Theb scourge of the country, and maybe the world eventually.
Crystal methamphetamine is a very strange drug for anyone to even contemplate taking into their body, since, as Eric confirmed my research, it is made in part with hydrochloric acid and other very noxious chemicals, and when it is inhaled, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t eat away at some part of your body. It is a very, very dangerous drug, and has been invading the east coast in recent years, and because it is cheaper and longer lasting, it will eventually overtake crack as the biggest and baddest drug out there. While fairly new to the east coast, as I said, it has been pervasive on the west coast for decades.
So while I sat on a kitchen chair, in a motel room type kitchen area, away from the fumes, Eric and Amy smoked their meth. I still could smell a chemical odor but it wasn’t too disturbing. I wasn’t aware that they had made a phone call for a delivery of more, and when the dealer showed up, Eric told me to turn around and to not look at him. It was a bit nerve-wracking, and I heard the dealer ask who I was, and the response was , “He’s cool.”
As they did their thing, we talked. I was a bit surprised at how normal they were. I asked if they ever tried to quit. Eric said that he did not care to stop, but Amy said that she had stopped for a while but was so hooked on it now that if she went cold turkey she would go into a coma for two days, and she couldn’t let Eric take responsibility for Ryan, who was fathered by someone else. They both said that they did not take the drug for fun, but just to feel normal and to be able to function. They both smoke it every day, not in large quantities but enough to maintain that “normal” feeling. What a life, eh?
I was concerned about something, or someone---Ryan. An absolutely adorable child, he appears to be as normal as can be, but being raised in a motel situation with crank smoking parents isn’t the usual, and when I asked about how they could do that with him present, they actually looked guilty and I thought that maybe I had crossed a line that might get me in a situation.
And then, as if to prove my point, little Ryan came out of his room and said he wanted to watch TV. Amy didn’t even try to hide her activity, and Eric didn’t say anything. I tried to distract the little guy, but I was a stranger to him and he didn’t respond.
As a former teacher, I was a “mandated reporter.” That means that if I see any case of child abuse, I am required by law to report it to the proper authorities. As a writer, though, it is a moral code violation to disclose sources. The child looked to be healthy, though, and that fact caused me to wait a couple of days before making that call this morning. Now that I am safely out of Lodi, I won’t have to look over my shoulder.
I have no idea of this was a typical example of this nonsense. I did hear more people talking about meth publicly than I hear on the east coast. The meth heads I’ve seen in Georgia look pretty bad usually, but not all do. Here, Eric, Amy and the few of their friends that came in and out seemed like normal people. Ironically it was my appearance that prompted Eric to ask me if I was in need. If I ran into either of them on the street, I wouldn’t be able to tell. Eventually, though, that insidious crap eats away at skin and bone and the results are exactly what you would expect.
I am including this piece because, as I said, it is something that I saw on my journey, even if I did seek it out due to being sick and bored in a motel room. Not every story is a pleasant one. This is one of them. I wish all parties well, but I was careful not to give them my blog info or any real location information, to be safe.

The (Almost) Smartest Man I Know.

James O is one of the smartest people I have ever met. He can rattle off to you every aspect of electrical engineering, and dozens of other topics wide and varied. Simply an amazing guy. He has come up with several inventions in the field, can engage in a conversation on almost any subject and sound like he knows what he is talking about.
He has been homeless. For a time he lived in a pallet house, a ramshackle structure made with wooden shipping pallets. No place for someone of James’s advanced years. He is all of 23 years old.
Part of James’s problem is that, although he is brilliant, and a good looking guy, responsible, polite, helpful and generous, he is lacking good sense in one very critical area: his wife is a bitch. On WHEELS.
I know. I saw her in action.
His troubles all began a couple of years ago, after they got married. She lost her job and had a baby boy. James had the good fortune to get a walk on job working for the city of Lodi, California. It is a temporary job until they can determine how well you are doing and then they make it permanent. It is a good job, with good pay and benefits. The kind of job that people wish they had and can ride to retirement on the back of.
James was doing, by his own account, very well. And then came his undoing: a girl with Daisy Duke shorts and a desire to show off her legs to the group of workers who were on a break sitting outside. James, along with every other worker who was not blind or dead, looked at the girl with admiring glances. While James and the others were watching her, who should be watching James but his wife. She had pulled into the parking lot of the Public Works building and saw James looking at the girl in the short shorts, and she short-circuited. Now James’s life is hell. Because of the girl in the shorts, and the fact that James dared LOOK at her, his wife began coming to his job almost every day. This did not please the supervisors, who took James aside and told him that they were very pleased his work but that his wife needed to stay home. Well, you know what happened…she kept coming, he lost the job and now he works at a gas station in Wallace, California.
That was where I met him. He was very kind to me and inpressed that I was walking across the country. We got to talk for a few minutes before IT started.
His wife. Started calling. And calling. He even sheepishly asked me if he could put me on the phone with her to tell her who I was. I agreed, spoke to her for 30 seconds, and gave the phone back to a grateful James.
He closed at 9 pm. He has to stay later to do paperwork. While he did his paperwork, we sat and talked. And she kept calling. At least 40 calls by my estimation . Most of them he didn’t answer, but on the ones he did he took on a conciliatory tone and tried to make nice with her. Folks, I am here to tell you that it didnt work. Shortly after the calls stopped, she wheeled into the parking lot. She barreled out of the car, and at 5’3, 240 pounds, barreled is the correct phrase. He got up and walked around to the front to talk to her. For 10 minutes , all I heard was her voice, yelling at him.
Then she left, spinning her tires and generally giving me the impression that she is a total ass and not worthy of a fine young man like James.
When James finally leaves her, he will then be the smartest man I know. But he is young, and the young make mistakes. And they learn from them. Time for James to learn.

Amy and Glen.....

Two entertainers made the news these past two weeks. Bad news on both fronts...
When I heard of the death of Amy Winehouse, I was not surprised. Her chosen lifestyle almost always has a bad ending of some sort, and hers was a “worst possible situation” thing.
A talented singer is gone, another in a long line. Someone’s daughter, lover, friend, pop idol, and a drug addict. And a human being. She was a terrible role model, didn’t seem to care, and didn’t try hard enough to kick her addictions. In the end it does not matter. She is gone—another wasted life.
But it was the news of a different musician this week that upset me more.
For those people of a certain age—mine---Glen Campbell was a big part of the soundtrack of your lives especially in the late sixties and seventies. He wrote and /or performed such classic songs as Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Rhinestone Cowboy, and, arguably the greatest of all songs, John Hartford’s Gentle on My Mind. Early in his career he was a member of the Beach Boys, playing bass on the road gigs. Ironically, it was not the bass he excelled at, but the guitar. He was an incredible plaer, about as good as anyone I’ve ever heard. I even saw him do a duet with Roy Clark once---on the same guitar, at the same time. Showoff-ish. Of course. Difficult to do? Absolutely.
After the hits dried up, Glen got into the drug scene himself for a little while, almost ruining his reputation. Booze remained a problem for years, including a DUI arrest several years ago that produced a classic mug shot that caused Glen to become a household name for different reasons. But that eventually faded away as well. And so did Glen Campbell. Last year he released his first album in too many years, featuring his clear and still pretty voice on songs by Greenday and Velvet Underground, among others. It was a fine album and I thought that the future was looking pretty good for old Glen. Then last week the news came out that he has Alzheimers. Talk about fading away… I guess we can only hope that Glen Campbell can get through that awful affliction with a minimal amount of hardship for both him, and for his family. He was a giant for a while, and though his mind is going to leave him soon, his music is timeless, and we were lucky to have had him. He is still planning to continue his career, and will be releasing what he calls his final studio album later this year, and a farewell tour to go with it.
It's knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk, says the
song. I wanna see Glen Campbell AND Amy Winehouse waving from the backroads by the rivers of all our memories.
Goodbye, Amy, and hang tough, Mr. Campbell.

Krazy in Kalifornia

I knew it was bound to happen at some point but for it to take as long as it did is a bit surprising. What am I referring to? (To what am I referring?) I’m talkin’ about me running into the nut factor, as I have in the past three days in California.
It started in Jamestown, a small village, not without its charm, in the foothills of the Sierra mountains. The place resembles an early twentieth century town, a row of shops and hotels lining the main drag, and a lovely little park in the middle of one side, with a large gazebo, some benches and tables, and enough privacy to make it a good enough place to sleep for the night. I was almost set up to do this. Enter Sherry.
At least, I think that was her name. She walked past several times, in shorts and a tank top, twitching and talking to herself. She carried a few shopping bags and other packages. She stopped in front of where I was sitting and asked me for five dollars for cigarettes. I told her I was broke and she got a bit confrontational. I ignored her and began to wonder if there was another place to go to. Now enter Brina, an older woman who knew Sherry. She distracted her for a few minutes and then after Sherry left told me not to let her sleep near where I was because she would try to steal from me. Great. I decided to spend money I didn’t want to spend and got a room, overpriced, at a motel down the street. Second floor, which meant that I had to lug my cart up the stairs, which I did. Room 20.
Wifi didn’t work. Phone calls were a hassle due to some bimbo at the front desk. Lousy night already.
Three AM—knocking on the door. I staggered out of bed and opened it. It was Sherry. She must have seen which room I went into. She basically barged in and demanded to use my bathroom. She was very loud, and I didn’t want to have a fight with a crazy woman, but I had to refuse. She left without a word. I went back to what sleep I could muster.
Part two, two nights later. San Andreas, California. Another small town, less charming than Jamestown, and basically a stopping point on the way to other places.
I was at the gas station talking on the phone booth phone via phone card, since my cell service stopped working due to cell tower issues. A man and woman walked by as I was talking and the woman asked me if I was okay. I nodded that I was and they left. I finished my call and headed for the library, a mile and a half away, where I left my cart after ascertaining it was a good place to sleep for the night, which was a Friday. I got on the library’s wifi and spent some time there, and then headed back to town for some drinks and snacks. As I left the store with my purchases, who should be walking along my path but the man and woman. Her name was Ann and the man was her brother Carl. Picture Farrah Fawcett’s body with Mickey Rourke’s head and you have Ann. Picture Danny Devito with a few extra inches in height and you have Carl. She was poured into her clothes and you could tell she had been a looker in her time. This was not her time, though, and her teeth were gone except for a few bottom remainders. The oddest thing though was the bandaids. Her cheeks were covered with big brown ones, and I asked her what had happened. She said that someone had thrown acid on her face. It got silent. Carl didn’t say a word, just walked along with a little innocent grin on his face.
They asked me if I was sleeping at the government center. I had no idea what that was, so they told me how it was just a place that they slept outside, behind the main building. I followed them to where it was and it turned out to be just a building that housed administrative offices of some sort. Ann said that at night workers went up on the roof and threw chemicals down on the people sleeping below. Oh, boy, I thought. Time to get a move on. I headed away to the library, which was almost literally next door. I spent a worried night wondering if I was going to be hassled by weird homeless people with band-aids on their faces. I wasn’t.
But, the next morning, as I left the library and headed back to the main road to continue my trek, who should I encounter but Ann and Carl. They asked me if I saw a strange woman with long hair walking to the library. I allowed as how I had not. They told me she had come intotown on the bus from Sonora and was very odd and they wouldn’t let her sleep with them.
I bade them good bye and left. Around the corner, at another building, there was a bench area like a bus stop. A tall woman sat there. I approached and asked her if she had run into the other two, and she told me her name was Cherish, and that she was there to visit her “husband”, a woman, since she was gay. The “husband” was in jail for some infraction and it was unclear when she/he would be getting out.
Cherish was a piece of work herself, very odd acting and with some strange ideas. She was missing the pinky finger on one hand and had some burn scars. I asked her what had happened and she told me that several years ago, while cooking chicken in a frying pan, she had a small stroke, and during that time she had grabbed hold of one of the pieces of chicken—still in the pan frying, and had just held her hand in the boiling oil for almost 20 minutes. It cost her the finger and surrounding tissue, and as a result can now only count to nine.
I was wondering when I was going to run across a crazy person, Ill bet those folks were wondering the same thing.

Phrog Jockeys

Derogatory term: camel jockey. Used as a put down of Arabs. Bench jockey: a second rate ball player content to sit in the dugout and harass the opposition. Frog jockey: well….
Okay, as crazy as it sounds, there are frog jockeys. Joe Kitchell is one of them.
In 2005, Joe ended a jumping drought for Angel’s Camp, “riding” Roy W. to a winning leap of 19 feet, 4 inches. That’s pretty damned far for a creature the size of a grapefruit to jump.
So what is the big deal about these here amphibians? The story goes like this: Mark Twain, early on, made his mark in the literary world with a story called The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, based on some stories he had heard from local tale tellers. He adapted their tales into his now-classic short piece, in a cabin located on Jackass Hill, a few miles south of Angels Camp, California. (Jackass Hill is named for the 200 or so pack mules that used to bring supplies through the area, on the road named for them.)
So, with Twain’s career under way, and the frogs now associated with Angels Camp, and Calaveras County, it was only a matter of time before frog jumping became a big deal. A contest is held every year at the local fairgrounds, and the winners (frog AND “jockey”) get a nice plaque, Hollywood style, on the sidewalk in the historic dowbtown section of Angel’s Camp. In 1954, Roy Weimer from Angel’s Camp prodded Lucky to a then world record jump of 16 feet, 10 inches. And he was the last local winner until 2005, when Joe Kitchell took the crop to Roy W (named after Weimer) and got to enjoy the benefits of the winner’s circle. Rumors about frog steroid use in the intervening years cannot be substantiated because all of the alleged participants were tragically served up at a local Chinese Buffet one evening due to a paperwork snafu.
Still, Roy W., clean and healthy, made his 19 foot jump, and Joe Kitchell saw fame and fortune in his eyes. Briefly.
He got to appear on the TV show, “I’ve Got a Secret”, for which he was paid 1000 dollars. “That’s more than I made for winning the contest,” he says.
And that was about it. Now, Joe works for the public works department, in part cleaning the sidewalks, including the very one where the bronze plaque commemorating his glory days. He doesn’t mind though, because it affords him the opportunity to wax philosophical about “phrogs”. (sorry)
“Frogs live for only three reasons: To eat, to not get eaten, and to make baby frogs.”
I asked Joe where the contestants come from. “Lakes and ponds,” he said. “About a week before the contest my team, the Calaveras County Frog Jockeys, goes out and rounds up as many as we can find. One night we got forty five. Some are too fat, or too thin. We try to get their body temperature up because the higher it is the more active they are.”
After the contest the winners, and losers are released back into the wild.
So where is Roy W these days?, I ask.
“He is out making baby frogs somewhere,” says Joe Kitchell, with a laugh.
Does life get any better? I mean it. Does it?

Yosemite, shared

After I visited Joplin, Missouri in May, it was three days after the tornado. It was almost too much to take in. That night I sat down and wrote the longest piece for my blog yet, about what I saw, preferring to just “spew” before my thoughts got jumbled.
A few days ago, I spent the day in Yosemite National Park. Again, it was almost too much to take in, but for completely different reasons. I decided to sit on my thoughts for a while to let the events of the past week sort themselves out as much as possible.
All of the superlatives about the place are deserved, to be sure. Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Bridal Veil, the sequoia groves, El Capitan, and so much more that I didn’t get to see this time. If there is a more beautiful and breathtaking place on earth…
What made this so special though, wasn’t a bunch of trees, or waterfalls, or wild animals. It was a beautiful combination of factors, including the most important one: I was seeing that amazing place courtesy of, and in the company of friends.
Walking across the country is a very lonely and solitary endeavor, unless you do it as part of a group. I am not. The benefits of doing it solo are many: you get to go where you want, with no argument. You get to eat where and when you want to. You can sleep in small places that only have room for one person. And much more.
The downside of the deal is this: when you see a beautiful waterfall, or lake, or even just a deer standing and staring peacefully, there is no one to nudge and say, “Wow, check that out!”
When Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild’s tragic protagonist) was dying of starvation in an abandoned old bus in the Alaskan wilderness, after having spent several years seeking that state of grace that he thought would come from living off the land by himself, he kept a journal. Running out of paper, he began writing short entries in his bible, I think it was. As his days dwindled, he finally had an epiphany. Too late, but still the realization came to him before the curtain went down on his life, and in his bible he wrote, the following: “Happiness is best when shared.”
And so it was that I was so able to see and appreciate the miracle of Yosemite with friends. Rolf and Tessa, a unique couple if ever there was one. I met Tessa on Facebook, due to a shared love of music, and we had talked a few times over the past year, , on the phone and have swapped music many more times. Her husband Rolf I did not know at all. Yet when the time for my walk came, I was invited to stay with them for a few days if my route took me through their town of Mammoth Lakes, California. Tessa and I had a bond already but Rolf did not know me at all, and it created a bit of an uncomfortable scenario early on, especially since Rolf was working most of the first three days I was there, alone with Tessa. By the last day of my visit though, we had established a good rapport and it made the Yosemite experience all the better.
Once again the words of the late Christopher McCandless reverberate: “Happiness is best when shared.”
Especially when what is being shared is Yosemite, and its glory.

Randolph Hudson III, on the road to Nirvana

What makes Randolph roam the roads? Adventure. Nothing more.
Twenty years old, from Lynchburg, Virginia, Randolph and I crossed paths in Groveland, California. He was sitting at the library there after I got dropped off in the parking lot by my friends Rolf Knutson and Tessa Coker. He was reading a book about, or by John Muir. He has been walking across and around the United States in search of beauty, much like Everett Ruess, Christopher McCandless and many others before him.
A well spoken young man, he seems to be truly content with his journey, which began in March in Virginia and has led him across the country by foot, car and train. He has hopped trains, hitched rides and walked a long way to get here, and he is not done yet. His next move is that he is going to try to secure a job at Yosemite, working at trail management or something to be able to roam the park at will. His eyes drift off into a happy place just at the mention of Yosemite and it seems like it might be his Nirvana. He dreams of building a cabin somewhere and living off the land, something he has done for a while now, since leaving Lynchburg.
He has parents. He has two sisters. They all support, perhaps grudgingly, what he is doing and his folks even got him a phone so he can be in touch. He shuns technology, for the most part, but does check the internet when he hits a library on occasion. He vows to never have a Facebook account, but was interested in the address for this blog, so he could check out my journey.
We spoke quite a bit about travelling, and Everett Ruess, who disappeared from the Davis Gulch area of southern Utah at the same age that Randolph is now, 20. We also briefly talked about the doomed Christopher McCandless, who was only a few years older than Randaolph when he ventured into the Alaska wilderness and starved to death in an abandoned bus, all because he was unprepared. I dont think that Randolph from Lynchburg, Virginia, is in any danger of that. He seems to have his act together and his wits about him. I wish him well. Its nice to be living the dream and the life you choose.
When he left Virginia in March with a hundred bucks to his name, Im sure he had no idea how far he’d get. He has come far. Very far. Good for him. I hope he makes it to Yosemite, a short day’s walk away. I hope he gets the gig he is looking for and I hope he gets to spend a glorious year in his Nirvana. If I was a younger man, Id probably do the same thing, especially after spending an extra special day in that extra special place today. What the hell took me so long???
Times are very hard right now. With so many out of work, out of luck and out of touch, it takes a special brand of courage to leave family and comfort and hit the road in search of something less concrete. Randolph is a very brave young man, and I admire him for it.

If God has wanted us to be naked, we'd have been born that way.....

So, California is the land of granola eaters and hippies and hottubs, right. Right.
Today brought about another adventure, and another chance at something new. Whew. Am I glad THAT is over!
Rolf and Tess, my friends and hosts for the past several days, took me to a place called Little Hot Creek. It is a few miles up in the middle of nowhere, cow country, really, and the dirt road that got us there would be more than a match for any regular car. The Jeep we were in got us there with only a few loud scrapes and bumps.
“There” was a natural hot spring, water, full of minerals and heated by volcanic activity, and running from an aquifer somewhere, through a pipe into a man-made tub in the middle of a field. As we approached I saw a naked man run for a pile of clothing, donning a bathing suit in a matter of seconds. He returned to the tub as we approached, and explained that he had put the suit on as a courtesy, and expressed a little annoyance that sometimes families with children came there and he wasn’t taking any chances.
Rolf and Tess had been there before and told him that they had no problem with whatever he did and before I could bat an eye they were doffing their clothing, leaving you know who as the only one of the group with clothes still on. Ahem.
So, when in Rome…or California. I dropped trou and dashed into the water. The…very…HOT…water. Ahem.
I now know what happens physically when you boil eggs. Ahem.
Needless to say, shy boy here had no choice but to try not to stare, and I did a good job of it, I think. Our little trio was fairly modest in all aspects, but Mr Showoff, the fellow who was already there, had no compunctions about walking around with a bit of a swagger in his dagger, so to speak.
In actuality, it was a very cool experience. Not physically—the water was almost unbearably hot, but the freedom from clothing and being au naturel was surprisingly refreshing. I was the first to put my clothes back on and walked around the area taking pictures of the creek and the rocks. Then we had snacks that we had brought and left a little later. Before we departed, Rolf actually drained the tub of water and with a brush left there for the purpose, scrubbed a lot of the green slimy algae off the sides. The pipe has a valve that can be shut off to allow the water that is already there to cool a bit. There is also a drain pipe with a stopper. It is a very nice setup that seems to be maintained by those who use it. He refilled the tub and we left. If everyone chips in, something can function well for a long time, and so it was with the Little Hot Creek tub, in the middle of nowhere, where I got naked. Woody Guthrie wrote: California is a garden of Eden. Now I know what he meant. Pass the fig leaf….please??

Bodie, California

Many years ago in the Hudson Valley region of New York, there existed a small community known as Potterville. The town was nestled deep in the woods above Wawarsing, New York, and featured a few houses and buildings. The advent of modern roads and local industry apparently drew everyone out of Potterville, and the place quietly became a ghost town of sorts. Local teens used to make the 8 mile trek up the often washed out road that led to Potterville, and I was among them.
It was the local story that the place was haunted, and we would sometimes bring our uninitiated friends up there to give them a good show of it, but in truth it was a rather bucolic setting, the buildings weren’t terribly dilapidated, and overall it might have been a good place for a picnic if it was not in such a remote and hard-to-get-to location.
There was one very odd incident that I still cant explain, though. I had gone for a ride up the bumpy road myself, blasting music and just being a teenager. When I got to Potterville, I parked my car and started hiking around. There was a garage type structure, open doored, and I looked inside. On a cross beam, about 8 or 10 feet up, was a bird. It was a dead bird, and it was nailed to the cross beam. I was fascinated and stared at it for a while, trying to make sense of why a dead bird would be nailed there. It occurred to me that I had better go grab my friends and bring them up to show them, since we were always looking for some reason to keep telling people the place was haunted. I zoomed out of there, back to town, where I found a friend, Vinny Nigro, and we headed back up. I could not wait to show him the bird, and was really playing it up.
We arrived, parked the car and walked down to the building. Voila!!! And the bird was gone. I stared hard, and could not believe it. Then I thought that maybe I was looking in the wrong building. But I wasn’t. The nail was still in place but there was no bird, no blood, no feathers even. Just a cynical Vinny and a confused Jim.
I had Potterville in mind when my hostess here in California, Ms. Tess Coker, brought me up to Bodie, a ghost town in the Sierra Mountains of eastern California. It had been an old mining settlement in the mid 1800’s, and was a fairly productive one, but soon enough all of the gold and silver veins had been worked out and the population began to slowly decline. From a high of almost 8000 residents in 1880 and with 65 saloons and with a reputation as a lawless place with a red light district and a Chinatown, Bodie was booming. Then the gold went away and so did the people and by World War II there was no one left. And it just sat there. Winters up there are so severe that often the buildings would be completely buried and the summers are devilishly hot at times.
There are over 150 original buildings still standing, in a state of preserved decay. There is a store, a gas station, a pool hall, a church and a schoolhouse, a firehouse, as well as a hotel which probably was also the whorehouse, many residences and other structures. The landscape is littered with various mining machines,old conveyances, and other bits of century old junk. The state of California has taken over the care and preservation of the place and for 7 bucks a head you can spend the day there, walking around pretty much to your heart’s content. Some of the buildings are safe enough to enter and have been cordoned off in spots to prevent theft of the artifacts which still sit on old tables and shelves. The pool hall looks like you could in and rack em up and shoot a few games, after the dust has settled. The rest of the place is just quaint and atmospheric, and one cant help but try to conjure up the spirits of the long departed as they walked through the rough streets and went about their day.
The cemetery is a bit up the road with around 160 graves in evidence. The last burial there was recent, in 2003.
I didn’t see any dead birds. In fact, there was not much wildlife in evidence at all. There were, on this day, several dozen tourists, many from Europe, based on their conversations, and they were all fascinated with the place, as were Tess and I.
I would recommend Bodie to anyone who might like to see a real chunk of history, as it was, where it was. A huge bonus is the ride out of Bodie. The vistas of the snowcapped Sierra Nevada range are spectacular, and are yet more eye candy for those who like eye candy.
Not a haunted town by any means. But haunting it certainly is.

Larry Cunningham says "Hug a telephone pole"

It took place outside of Delta, Colorado. I was walking along at a good clip, trying to stay ahead of a pretty vicious thunderstorm which had been following me for hours. It was dark, windy and the terrain was flat and endless, yet another in the series of flat open areas that I have been stuck in as lighting and hail and rain have knocked me around for a dozen loops.
From seemingly out of nowhere a man appeared beside me. I had not seen his truck, a utility vehicle, as it has stopped behind me and had not heard him calling out to me, since my mp3 player was blasting away. I quickly shut it off and listened to the man, whose name was, I soon found out, Larry Cunningham. He asked me if I minded if he walked with me while he asked me some questions. He seemed harmless enough so I said it was okay. He had seen me walking for several days in a row and wondered what I was doing it for. I happily told him about WhyHunger and their mission. I gave him a card and he was thrilled to have it. He said he was going to go home and make a donation pronto.
I asked him if he thought I was going to avoid the storm. He looked at the clouds behind us and said, “No. Its going to get you pretty soon.” I laughed and told him that I was a sitting duck for the lightning, to which he replied, “Hug a telephone pole. It’s the safest place for you if you’re out in the open. The lightning won’t hit you full blast, but it’s the safest place you ll be. So if it starts to lighting, hug a telephone pole.”
The utility truck told me that he probably knew what he was talking about. So, next time it starts to lightning, remember those words: Hug a telephone pole.

Words cannot describe...

It’s hard to describe the beauty of the Sierras. Saying something like ,”There is a big beautiful waterfall high up on a mountain above Lake June” doesn’t tell you much. Sadly, neither does a photograph of said waterfall. Or a bunch of photographs. Somehow it only seems to look as impressive in person, and when you are a writer, and cannot communicate that beauty, you have failed at your craft.
Suffice it to say, these mountains are something special, the secret California that Easterners like myself have only heard rumours of. They are the equal of the Rockies, tamed but still plenty wild. They are the Adirondacks times ten and the Catskills times twenty. They are half of the Andes and a third of the Himalayas, and much more approachable, somehow, and more welcoming. Still a tough climb but doable if you have not spent half your life at Mcdonalds.
So, today, as I had thoughts of Harry Chapin in my head, it being the 30th anniversary of his passing, I went for a walk up a mountain, to try to get near to this beautiful veil of water that was cascading down the rocks from a height of several hundred feet above the ground. Though it was far away the sound of the crashing splashing torrent was easy to hear and made it seem all so close.
I knew that a trail led the way. I found it, and began my upward trek. It was not a trail for humans, but more designed for donkeys and horses, which were in abundance as pack trains of them carried both tourists and gourmet food to the top of the mountain, far above even the waterfall, which seemed to come out of the side of the mountain. Several times I had to stop as the animals were frozen in front of me. Their loads often shifted, huge sacks full of the supplies that sometimes had to be re-strapped to their sides by the cowboy guides who escorted them all up the hill. It felt like stopping for a crossing guard or a red light.
The rocks and steep upward angle of the trail were painful to my feet, feet that have been pounded into almost raw tissue over the almost 2000 miles I have walked thus far. Add to that the seeming tons of horse and donkey dung that filled the trail in spots, and there were plenty of obstacles to get past if I was going to make it to the water fall.
Finally, I crested a hill and as the trail turned right, to the left, across a ravine, I saw it. It was powerful and fast, a spray of cold snowmelt water that splayed out at almost 45 degree angles to the drop, and then curved hard to the left as it went down a hidden course inside the rocks and crevices. I snapped a few pictures, and a fellow walking man took a shot or two of me with the falls behind me.
It looks so small in the picture. But it wasn’t small. it was big. And beautiful. My words cannot convey that in adequate terms, so it is up to you to use your imaginations. Close your eyes. Hear the distant crashing of water…and see what I saw.

Rainbow Falls, and the Devil's Postpile

Two places with two names that couldnt be more diametrically opposed: Rainbow Falls, and the Devil’s Postpile.
I confess that I had never heard of either, but thanks to my friends Tessa Roker and Rolf Knutson, I have now been to both. And I am in awe of nature once again. In fact, my respect for the ways of the earth and the way that beauty can be found in rocks and trees is growing with each passing moment.
Rainbow Falls lies high up in the Sierra Mountains, nestled inside a stone crevasse but accessible by foot and eye if one is careful. The angle of the falls and the coincidental(?) positioning of the sun at a certain time of the day result in a beautiful and vivid rainbow that crosses the small gorge in front of it. The National Parks Service gone one better though and created trails that lead down to the bottom of the falls, at river level, and while the rainbow effect is not visible there, the cool mist and cooler breeze from the tumbling waters make it a very…damp and exhilarating experience.
The Devil’s Postpile is another beast altogether. As a sign states, there are shapes in nature that are more than just nice to look at. Some of them are functional. Such as it is with this amazing display of the ways of the natural world. The hexagonal shape that is seen in the Devil’s Postpile is a result of various forces that caused the rock to split into perfectly formed hexagonal shapes as a way to relieve stress and make space for movement. I might not be explain it well, but there are other places in nature where this is seen: beehives, salt flats, soap bubbles and turtle shells.
So, the Devils Postpile looks like a massive wall of stony posts emerging from the ground. As time goes by they break off and fall in pieces down the hill, leaving an exposed wall of, well, posts. When you take the trail to the top, you are on a rounded dome, looking like a mosaic. And it is not a good idea to go too much toward the edge because one slip and……
It was beautiful. As was Rainbow Falls, in different ways, and both highlights of this walk.
On the bus ride down from the mountain (shuttle buses only for most of the day is the rule) I got a little surprise. Tess knew the driver, a woman named Chyna, (not the wrestler) a cool young lady with a good sense of timing. Over her PA system, she began telling us all that there was someone on the bus was walking across the US. Well, heck. It was a nice surprise, and then she gave me the opportunity to tell the full busload of folks about WhyHunger and Harry Chapin and I gave out the website address, not once but twice, and she repeated it later as well. It brought forth a lot of questions and good wishes and hopefully a few donations.
One of the better days I have had on this trip, and with Mono Lake and Yosemite still ahead of me, as well as the entire width of the state of California and San Francisco, I am renewed again.

Go Greyhound? Well, if I HAVE to.....

It is a blessing and a curse. Greyhound, that is. It is a bus service that will allow you to travel from San Francisco to Tampa for 208 bucks. It also allows you to feel like the scum of the earth when it comes to customer service, especially at the corporate level. Is it a fair trade? I guess it depends on your point of view.
While I can understand the logic of placing the bus stations in depressed neighborhoods, because wealthier ones wouldn’t allow it, the fact is that some of the neighborhoods are so scary and so full of the dregs of society that you don’t want to step outside with your luggage for fear of a mugging. Take the Greyhound station in Atlanta. When you pull up to drop off a passenger, there are often groups of hustlers and crack dealers , or more likely crack users, waiting to bum rush you and get a few dollars for the wonderful job of guarding your car for that they will do for you. Atlanta is as bad ias it gets, and I would rather spend more dough and fly out of the airport than ever set foot in that hellhole again.
Reno, Nevada, isn’t as bad as that. While there are a few distractions as you step outside, mostly hookers heading past on their way to the busier areas, and a few homeless,
I didn’t feel quite as threatened as I did in Atlanta, despite the fact the Reno police don’t seem to do much in the way of policing the area around the place. I slept on a park last night a block and a half from the buses and had to step over sleeping homeless men.
Salt Lake City, on the other hand, was crowded, full of shady looking people of both genders, and is in a locale that makes Flint, Michigan look like a thriving Metropolis. Several blocks away though the prosperity kicks in.
I spoke to a fellow passenger yesterday about this situation. He agreed with me, concluding that he hoped to high Heaven that someone, some day, starts a bus company to compete with Greyhound, and that they keep their stations clean and safe. He just prays to God for that to happen.
Amen, brother. Amen.

Reno, where dreamers dream. And dream. And dream

Daytime in Reno, and a look at the place in the light. It looks much cleaner, is teeming with a different blend of characters, although a few faces looked familiar, and was generally less intimidating.
Still, the place seems to be a place for dreamers and those with nothing left to lose. As Dylan said, “When you aint got nothing you got nothing to lose. You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.“
Case in point: Nancy. Nancy was loitering around the entrance to the McDonald’s that I went into last night, on 2nd Street. She was looking like she might have been a bit intoxicated last night, and when I walked past the McDonalds this morning, she was there, but dressed differently. I decided to speak to her. I stopped, leaned against the wall and just casually asked her if I had seen her there last night. She avowed that I had, but that she had gone to get her hair fixed. While telling me this, she spun around to show me where her hair had been damaged in the back by over-processing. The turning around caused her to list to one side and I reached out to catch her if she fell. She said that she was NOT drunk, but was on medication. She didn’t smell drunk, so I took her at her word. She looked at my cart and advised me that the bike police would probably stop me and ask me what I was doing. I asked her why, and she told me that they would say that I could possibly grab my air mattress off the cart, where it is strapped down, and hit someone over the head with it. I laughed, but she said that she saw a guy get hit over the head with a bottle and get knocked unconscious. I had no reason whatsoever to think she was lying.
I asked her if she was a “working girl” (colloquialism for hooker), and she told me that she used to be “legal” (Nevada allows prostitution under strict conditions, including frequent medical exams) but that she now had stopped, and was on disability. She related how she used to tell her clients to look out for the illegal girls, because “They carry weapons, want your wallet, and once they get your information, won’t leave you alone.”
Out of nowhere she volunteered that she was raised as a Catholic. However, she said, she didn’t remember being baptized. I told her that she would have been an infant and wouldn’t remember that far back anyway. She said that she remembered her father walking into her bedroom while she was in the bassinet (I must say that I thought she was going to tell me that he molested her) and asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She said that she probably replied “Goo goo gaga or something. “
Nancy worked at a bowling alley for a few years and is now disabled. She’s been claen and sober for three years now and was broke when I spoke to her. I had no cash to give her but she said it was okay, that I seemed interesting and that she wished me well on my trip. I took a photo of her and we parted. She walked away, looking for a few dollars to get breakfast, having spent the last of her money on her hair.
I walked up the street, clicking away, until I came to the Arch Wedding Chapel, a clean looking well lit hole in the wall where more dreams are fulfilled, in the cheesiest possible setting. I was going to ask the proprietor about his business, but when I walked in the only people in sight were a coupke who had just gotten married. The groom was a rotund older man in a wheelchair, wearing a white suit and a big hat. The bride a middle aged, very plain looking woman in a wedding dress and hat. They had just gotten hitched in the back of the “chapel”. I congratulated them, and asked if I might get them to pose for a picture. That was when the man spoke, in English filtered through a very thick French accent. “Speak more slowly please,” he said. I repeated myself, but he still did not understand. His new bride leaned over and told him, in perfect English (she was Amercian) what I wanted. He leaned back in his wheelchair, waved me off and said, “Oh, no no no.”
The proprietor came out and handed the couple some papers to sign, making it all official. While they signed, he and I talked about the marriage business for a moment. As we were talking I must admit I snapped a few surreptitious shots of the couple. I will not be deterred! The proprietor had little to say, so I left, and waited outside, where a limo was parked to take the new couple to their honeymoon destination, although the groom was so large and unhealthy that the honeymoon night might have to be spent in intensive care. I got the sense that the entire charade was for a green card for him and a few grand for her, but who knows? As the proprietor helped load the large groom into the limo while the bride stood by holding her new hubby’s cane, he looked over at me and gave me a smile and a wink, as if to say, “Oh boy, another pair of losers just made me richer.”
Or, maybe his smile was just another façade like so many others I had seen here, where dreams are just that. The pawnshops are plentiful, and stocked full of the things people once held dear, but not dear enough to stop them from trading them in for a few bucks and another chance to throw their hard earned cash at these sleazy bastards who make this city what it is: a Boulevard of broken dreams.
I want to be able to say something nice about Reno. So I will. The park that is built on both sides of the Truckee River is beautiful, clean and has a lot to offer the young people who use it. Other than that, I saw nothing much to make me want to come back here.

Mormonland

It isn’t hard to tell that there is something wholesome and clean cut about Salt Lake City, Utah. After all, it is the epicenter of the Mormon religion, the mecca, if you will, for neatly dressed men and women with permanent smiles and helpful attitudes.
Founded on a dubious premise, by a man named Joseph Smith, the Mormon religion has been around for almost 200 years. After Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered in 1844 by a mob who was accusing them of treason, the church was taken over by Brigham Young, and eventually, after locating in Illinois and Nebraska, they settled down in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they have basically taken over the joint.
Now, as a non religious person, I have noted many times that I still feel that churches, and their members, do wonderful works, and have a tremendously positive influence on young, and older people. And it certainly seems to be the case in Salt Lake City. As I ventured inside Temple Square, in the shadow of the great and masterful piece of architecture that is the Mormon temple, I was amazed at how clean, well-manicured and welcoming it was. And that was just the landscaping. The people were even more so. I spoke to several of them, including guys doing the lawnmowing and sidewalk sweeping, and they all seemed to be as knowledgeable about the history the church and were more than happy to share their knowledge. I listened with an open mind.
They told me that the church is based on the idea of family, and that marriage between a man and a woman is not just for “til death do them part”, but for all eternity. Im not going to get into all the technical aspects of the church here—plenty has been written about it already---but to the casual observer, it seems like a nice enough premise and a good way to live your life. That said, there coincidently happened to be a column in a local paper by a gay man who grew up a Mormon and was basically run out of town for his lifestyle, which, by the way, he did not choose, and fought for years, until he couldn’t help but accept the fact that he was indeed gay. The church considers homosexuality to be anathema, evidence of the devil’s work on earth, and an affront to God. Yet, as the man wrote in his piece, he learned growing up that there were certain codes that gays used, and he soon learned that many many of the churches members, the strict, diehard members, were closeted, and would often cruise the local mall and parks looking for the quick contact with other men. He got to know them and realized that there was a lot of hypocrisy there, just as in every other religion.
But Im not here to slam the Mormon church, or churches in general. I am here to say that I was treated very well, even allowed/encouraged to bring my cart up to the observation deck of the church’s office building, where I was given a first class view, and tour, of the city below, an oasis in the desert. People were quick to answer any questions I had and even more quick to tell me exactly which sites I should visit if time permitted. I got to see the 21000 seat conference center, the Tabernacle, where the famous Choir performs, and much more, in just a couple of hours, before I had to get back on the bus fo r a trip to that exact opposite of the Mormon Church, that den if skin and iniquity, Reno , Nevada.

Reno...Hell no.

Reno, Nevada. The self proclaimed Biggest Little City in the World.
Its not small enough for me, and from what I can see of it as a city, it appears to be a case of “just let people do what they will” and it doesnt matter what they do as along as they don’t hold up a liquor store.
Arriving yesterday, after the sun went down but in that state of twilight and dusk that makes everything look clean, I had no idea where to go. I had ridden the bus for almost 18 hours to get here, forgoing Utah, and Nevada for the simple reason that I want to stay alive. I was tired and hungry and more than a little sore from sitting.
I left the bus depot, looking for a safe place to sleep. After quite a search, and after watching about a hundred different teenagers walking and running around through a nice park with ivy covered tennis courts, I decided to make a go of a few hours sleep in the park. I saw a mens restroom that was open. I went in and there was a body, alive but sleeping, on the floor. I left. I walked around to one of the tennis courts, and almost tripped over another body, alive but sleeping. I left and found another tennis court section that was empty. I set up my sleeping bag and managed to get a decent nights sleep, despite a number of people walking past me in the night. You learn to sleep lightly when out on the road, and any little sound will rouse you but you learn to go back to sleep fairly quickly.
Prior to the park, I had ventured out onto “the strip”, as it is known. Exactly what I expected to find: teenaged hookers, drugged out dudes doing kung fu moves to their own reflections in windows, groups of young people, all amid the bright lights of faded casinos and old sleazy motels and flashing lights from police cars and ambulances, with their attendant noises. Not a pretty picture in general but for a tired guy pushing a converted baby stroller loaded with his “stuff” and looking for a safe place to park it for the night, this sure was a far cry from Kansas, baby. A far cry.
One lighter note though: I walked a black gentleman, skinny from years on the streets. He commented something to me as I passed. I didn’t hear any threat in his tone and so asked him to repeat what he said.
He nodded at my cart, and said, “I said, ‘Unless you invented that rig yourself, it must be military grade.’” I laughed, and replied, “No, its actually well constructed baby stroller grade.” We both laughed and I kept walking. I passed the shopping cart, grocery store grade, that he was using.
Seriously, Reno has no appeal to me at all. After months and months of walking through small town America and meeting small town and very real Americans, places like this hold about as much appeal to me as a sore tooth. Maybe a sore tooth is a better option, now that I think about it.

Just another sad story.

The old man sat across from me on the bus. He was about 70 years old, to my eyes, but might have well been younger. The white and very full beard that covered his thin face hid a lot of the truth, while speaking volumes of its own truth. The man slumped forward, leaned against the window and seemed to fall asleep in minutes. Forty minutes later we pulled into Grand Junction, Colorado, the sprawling city near the northwest corner of Colorado. A short layover while a late bus brought more passengers. The old man got off. I did not see where the walker came from but I did see the tube full of yellow urine snaking out from his pants and the half full bag loosely and tenuously strapped to his leg. He wore decent jeans and a button down long sleeved shirt and a baseball cap.
He seemed to be a little confused once he got off the bus. I asked him if he needed any assistance and he politely declined.
Across the street from the depot is a bronze statue of a boy hanging onto a rope, as if at a swimming hole. There is a pedestal under the statue with room enough for someone to sit. The old man walked his walker over to it and sat in the shadows. I watched him from a distance and then decided to go over and make a little attempt at conversation.
“Do you live here, if I may ask?’
“No, I don’t live anywhere. I was living in Albuquerque, but I had to get the hell out of there.”
“Ive never been there.”
“You don’t want to go there---it’s a hellhole of a place.”
He started to put on a jacket. I asked him if someone was coming for him. He said that he would have to make a call but that someone would probably get him in the morning. It was now midnight, and it was not a very good section of town.
His old arms couldn’t reach to get into the sleeves of his coat. I helped him put each arm in and straightened his collar after he said that he preferred it down.
“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” I asked, not knowing what I would do if he said that he wasn’t.
“Ill be fine”
“Okay then, take care of yourself.” I watched as he lit a cigarette. I briefly thought of making a joke about him quitting smoking. But then I realized, as I looked at the walker, and the tube with the urine bag attached, and the snot that had appeared in his mustache, and the way that he sat slumped over, that the cigarette was probably the only thing that gave him a moment’s pleasure, and I said nothing, except good night and take care.
I got back on the bus, found my seat and sat down. I looked out the window at where the old man was sitting. He was gone.