Americonoclastic

Pushed Around by Time

2010-08-02T17:03:00.002-06:00

Rocks move
Pushed around by time
Mountains smooth
An alluvial fan
Drain to plain

Cactus endure
Like humans
Mostly water
Like people
Bristly on the outside

Cottonwoods breach
Reach a deep water seep
Hiding place revealed
By bright new green leaves
Making music and shade

Canyons and Pinyons
Share sinuous space
And are shaped the same
By water and wind
As is the very sand

Land from under oceans
Pushed around by time
Deserted crustaceans
Derelicts like junk
Float on sand

Wind resides here
As still as wind can be
Furious one moment
Then silent as stone
Leave you alone

Rocks move
Pushed around by time

Friend, neighbor, music freak.

2008-05-25T07:03:00.000-06:00

A couple of happy ladies

2008-05-24T07:00:00.000-06:00

The Pottery Barn . . . yard.

2008-05-23T04:00:00.000-06:00

Playing photographic catch up.

2008-05-19T08:20:00.007-06:00

Details, details, I love macro.

2008-05-17T13:20:00.000-06:00

The Offending Word was Perfunctory

2008-05-16T13:27:00.003-06:00

The offending word was perfunctory. I’m not saying the word that was used had a perfunctory meaning. I mean to say that it was the word ‘perfunctory’ that resulted in the reprimand. Now, it’s a given that some ski patrollers are college educated. Others have gained intelligence through experience and/or a love of, say, reading perhaps. While others . . . haven’t, but, boy, can they ski!

When I was in high school, we thought it wasn’t ‘cool’ to be smart. Luckily, I was smart enough to graduate (a year early) and move away. I hadn’t been in Colorado long before many epiphanies struck (don’t use that word on the radio), some simultaneously (don’t use that word on the radio). I discovered that I could live and work in ski towns high up in the mountains of Colorado. That was no small lesson for an eighteen year old who had previously hitchhiked twenty miles one way, leaving home at nine p.m., to pump gas from eleven at night to seven in the morning. It paid two dollars and sixty-five cents an hour. And I was lucky to get the job. It was strictly serendipitous. Now there’s a word you probably shouldn’t use on the radio. Oh yeah, did I mention that I was hitchhiking in the Snow Belt in the winter?

I started at Keystone making five an hour, that’s almost twice what I was making back home, plus a ski pass. A few of my many epiphanies were the following; I figured out how to get a place to live and how to find roommates. I realized that if I wanted to, I could spend my money on airplane tickets instead of say, chrome wheels and carburetors or hood scoops and racing stripes. My first roommate filled an entire wall with records, a small wall but still a wall of music. It was a wall of all new music to me. There were albums in there by artists like Bonnie Raitt (Give it Up), John Prine (Illegal Smile), Jesus Christ Super Star. Jesus Christ, that was some great music. As a kid I never made it past The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd etc, and somewhat embarrassingly, R.E.O. Speed Wagon. Don’t get me wrong, I still love that music too. My new roommate also had books. Books, what kind of freak had moved into my trailer? Yeah, he had a wall’s worth of them too. Carlos Castaneda, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Alchemist (that’s a word I didn’t know and don’t use it on the radio either), Herman Hesse. Speaking of Hesse, the gas station I worked at back in western New York was a Hess gas station. If you know these titles (like I didn’t), you understand the genre. Nights that I wasn’t washing the ski shuttle buses up at Keystone and occasionally bending the mirrors in the wash bays or driving them into ditches and Ralph was at work waiting tables at the Ramada Inn, I would sit in our trailer and listen to music I had never heard of and read his books, reading also being ‘unheard of’ for me. I discovered an aptitude, but don’t use that word on the radio. I learned things from reading books! Huh. So, the most important epiphany that came from that first winter of my new life was I decided that, in fact, it was cool to be smart. I’ve been playing catch-up ever since.

So I’m at ski patrol almost thirty years of playing catch-up later, having long since moved out of Summit County, with a couple of my coworkers who are also my friends and more importantly for this story, they are also my supervisors. We were doing my midseason job performance evaluation. Never mind that it was well past midseason. That was because my last name starts with W, they said. I’ve heard that before. It was the best evaluation I’d ever gotten. I stepped up big that year and it was noticed and appreciated. We were about finished and shaking hands and congratulating each other, etc., when they (my friends, my supervisors) give each other a look of ‘oh yeah, just remembered’. It was one of those looks that when you see it, you instinctively realize that you were not supposed to. Their smiles didn’t disappear completely, but they definitely shifted toward an evolving smirk trying to reach a poker face. They sat back down. It was not over yet. They started with a chuckle, keeping it light. After the beginning of an awkward silence, they both spoke at once. They chuckled again and one of them proceeded to tell me that I use words on the radio that are ‘too big’. They nodded grave agreement. I barely suppressed a smile, realizing just in time that they were not kidding. They specifically recalled an incident where I was so audacious as to use the word . . . perfunctory. Understand that Audacious is the name of one of our ski runs. So, I guess you can use that word on the radio. Maybe we should name a run Perfunctory. Fortunately, they really didn’t know what perfunctory meant. I used it in the context of doing something ‘routinely’. I said something on my radio like, “Patrol, this is Remo, I just did a perfunctory sweep of the Hot Y closures. They’re all in place, over.” Upon looking the word up later, I found that most descriptions are along the lines of: “done or acting routinely AND with little interest or care.” Maybe I didn’t exactly know what the word meant either. I certainly didn’t sweep the Hot Y’s with “little interest or care.” With all three of us oblivious to that part of the meaning, we returned to smiles and hand shaking. I walked away with the biggest raise you can get per year. No big deal, it’s routine. In fact, it was almost perfunctory.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the conversation stuck with me. It struck me as odd. Within a day or two, I was making fun of having been reprimanded for using big words. Then I thought about it more seriously. I considered what it truly meant. I looked more closely at some of my contemporaries. I noticed the misspelled words on medical supplies and other equipment. It had always been that way. I just couldn’t ignore it anymore. And I don’t mean words like artificial external defibrillator. I mean words like bag, valve, mask and safety. We once famously printed a batch of t-shirts that proclaimed “Saftey first.” That’s when I thought of “Saftey first, spelling second.” We never printed that one. Don’t even get me started on trying to read some of my co-workers’ medical statements and other paperwork.

The deeper meaning of the situation was becoming clear. For this to actually be an issue of concern was very telling. Ultimately, they were requesting/requiring me to ‘dumb myself down’ to facilitate some of our less intelligent patrollers. Facilitate, don’t say it on the radio. You’re only as strong as your weakest link. I love ski patrolling, especially where I work. Hiking to the top of the peak to access ‘the bowl’ is an everyday occurrence. The expert terrain, the views, the locals and yes, my coworkers all contribute to a great work environment and experience. I ride my bicycle to work all winter. I value my job greatly. As does my wife for our medical and dental and of course, the ski passes. So, I have adopted this philosophy; I try to take a moment before I talk on the radio and choose words that, although they wouldn’t be my first choice, or, I might add, the best word choice, will be most easily understood by most patrollers. I’m still and always will be playing catch-up in the intelligence department. But apparently I’m not doing too badly. These guys are my friends. Hopefully they still will be after reading this. I mean no offense and actually they made me feel pretty good about myself that day.

One of these friends/supervisors graduated top of his class. He is definitely smarter than I am. I don’t understand. He seems embarrassed by this fact. He hides his intelligence. Maybe he thinks it isn’t cool to be smart.

I’m just lucky I discovered reading and discovered I like it. I can climb a mountain and ski it. I can bike a couple hundred miles. But, I can also happily sit on my ass for untold hours on end, reading.

A lot of my friends are super high energy. They can’t sit still for long. The endorphins and adrenalin rule. They are more committed athletes than I am.

Some people might not even consider perfunctory a big word. Apparently they do. But, boy, can they ski.

Photo Credit

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T09:49:00.001-06:00

Love you I do. I did say I do . I'd do it again too.
Shall we, want too? Whats new? True love grew anew.

Maybe

2008-05-10T15:48:00.003-06:00

He showed up at one of my bachelor parties. Or should
I say that one of my bachelor parties showed up at one
of his drinking holes. It's good to know what your
heroes look like. Especially if they are, say, writers,
artists, photographers or any other sort who are
usually at the other end of the camera, if anywhere
near a camera at all. We were going to maybe go
through Bisbee on our honeymoon. It was a loosely
planned three-week road-trip through the southwest. I
researched heavily all the myriad places I'd like to
see and that there was no way we would see all of
them. Bridget suggested we make up little framed
pictures with the names of the places that we might
visit, knowing full well that many of those cards
would go unvisited. Bisbee was one. I knew Nicholas
lived in Bisbee. This was long after he was no longer
shooting for National Geographic. He was a hell
raising alternative artist creating controversy.

He learned to like tomatoes and almost lost his virginity.

2008-04-13T16:56:00.003-06:00

Oppressive heat and humidity mirrored the government's
philosophy, that is, be heavy, constant and
omnipresent. But, he only knew about the weather.

He was eighteen and white as only a terminally bundled
up kid from Western New York winters can be. Having
spent his first winter in Colorado, he did sport the
tanned/burnt face and raccoon eyes from wearing
sunglasses while skiing every day. At the time, it
was considered cool in Colorado. A kind of social
indicator, like being white skinned in Edwardian
England or being overweight in India is a sign of
wealth. The raccoon eyes meant you were a skier.

This was not Colorado. And these people would never
get raccoon eyes even if they skied a hundred days a
year.

He was ignorant of politics. And that's what the
tourist agency preferred. A tourist charter nonstop
from Denver to Montego Bay, for a week of all
inclusive, exclusive tourism, doesn't want you to know
about that damn Bob Marley etc. And he didn't. Not
many people did know about him yet, this being April
of 1978. Bob was still alive and on island.

The humidity was such that a haze hung low and near,
mixed with the heat waves, it produced a surreal
scene from first step off the plane. It would have
been exotic, no matter what. Sure, he had been on an
island before. He had been to the Thousand Islands and
there was an island on Heaths pond where the kids used
to play hockey. That's about it. Oh yeah, he had
camped illegally on Goat Island between the American
and Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls. He grew up
ninety miles from Canada and had been there often
enough. But, this was his first 'foreign' country. The
trees, the roads, the people, the clothes, the air,
the smell, the heat, the language, the currency, the
food, the water, the beer, the police, the animals,
the buildings, the cars, the music, it was all
exciting and intimidating. Before he knew it though,
everything was somehow more familiar.

The Montego Beach Hotel played 'regular' music. You
didn't need currency, but if you did want to use it,
the staff was eager to accept American dollars. It
was, oh so gated and green and swept clean. The taxi
ride from the airport to the hotel would remain his
favorite part of the trip.

He got the sunburn of his life. By the end of the
first day, he was cooked. It had taken him a while to
grasp that people would pay fifty dollars for
sunglasses in Colorado. He never even owned a pair
back home. Didn't need 'em. After he sunburned his
eyes skiing at A-Basin, (with a base elevation of
eleven thousand feet) he gladly shelled out the fifty.
But, he also didn't know about sunscreen.

Soon enough, his friends were taking pictures of him up
against the crumbling pink stucco walls of the
compound, er, I mean hotel. His pink, peeling, scaly
with white underneath skin, bore a remarkable
resemblance to the walls.

He learned to like tomatoes and almost lost his
virginity. Anybody else would have, lost their
virginity, that is,. I don't know about the tomatoes.
The evening staff winked conspiratorially as he was
being escorted by the hand toward the beach. The girl
doing the towing carried a sheet and a pillow in her
other hand. They spent the night in the sand. He found
it glorious and bewildering. She must have thought him
gay afterwards. He wasn't. Somehow he never
understood. But he did get bitten by something in the
night that would lead to extreme embarrassment soon
enough. He would carry the scar on his butt for life.
Without going into too much detail, three holes opened
on his left cheek and took a long time to close and
heal. He couldn't sit right for a long time.

They put on a skit and won first prize in the 'talent'
contest. They wore palm fronds on their arms, they
were draped in bed sheets and had scarves on their
heads. They devised a dance routine and sung 'Tip Toe
Through Jamaica' as their other friend rudimentarily
plinked it on the hotel piano. They bowed gracefully
and ran off the end of the pier and dove into the
ocean. They nearly drowned, wrapped in sheets and
scarves, as they were getting a standing ovation. That
put the show over the edge. They won big rum umbrella
fruit drinks similar in color to the hotel walls and
of course, his still beaming pink skin.

Let's see, they got harassed by a man with a machete
at Ocho Rios. But, the hotel van driver scared him
off. I don't think people get bothered at Ocho Rios
anymore. It's turned into a big tourist stop. The
weapon wielding man probably knew this was coming and
was trying to save his private paradise. Tourism is
not without its negative impacts.

All 156 people on this charter sort of knew each other
by the end of the week. Certainly they all knew us. We
won the talent contest! The flight back to Denver
reflected this familiarity. The stewardesses tried to
stop serving but it was too late. The passengers were
up and singing and pillow fighting. They self-served
and emptied the plane of alcohol. Someone was
reprimanded for trying to light up on the plane, not
arrested, not detained upon arrival, just told not to
do it. This was just before Nancy Reagan. Lucky for
him. Customs was a big drunken humor festival, if you
happened to be one of the passengers that is. What
would they do today if an entire planeload of
passengers except the children were acting like
children? Tourism is not without its negative
impacts.

They were surprised to find their stash still hidden
in the bathroom. None of them was brave/stupid enough
to try to carry it on the plane. Besides, duh, they
were going to Jamaica. Need I say more?

He and his talented friends got through, got luggage
and got out. They found Ralph's white '66 Ford
Galaxie, but just barely. It was buried. It was
Colorado Front Range blizzarding. Up in the mountains
they love the snow. Denver is next to the mountains,
not in them. It might as well be most places in the
country that, unlike ski towns, hate snowstorms and
have trouble functioning in them.

They fired up and drove up. They barely made Floyd
Hill. A front engined, two wheel, rear wheel drive,
four door, twelve year old sedan is almost required to
have bald tires. Ralph's passed the test. They made
Silverthorne that night. Sunburn and a snowstorm. He
discovered that he loved traveling. And the world was
getting bigger by the day. Exactly one week later four
of them boarded another plane in Denver and flew to
L.A. He had never been to California either.

Las Vagueness or Whauut?

2008-04-10T18:18:00.002-06:00

It's a long haul across the last lost sprawl west of
the San Rafael Swell. And you don't say it the way you
spell. Especially when you are blowing west through
the snowing's best test and showing stress. There are
few other cars to view on the road, about as many as
finally are off the road. But the sane planes wouldn't
fly and instead of try to cross the backbone to get to
where we would have flown, we just took a left and
left and drove west, into the weather nest, not under
the desk. We took a little risk and hoped for the
best. It carried on scary and fast and low. We were
just trying to make the show. By the time and place
where we were still far far away but close enough to
say we could see the stuff of myth legends and famous
beginnings of ends, the storm was all petered like
bony grubby money lost on dice-dots in slots and
parking meters. It hid little veins and arcs of stark
of white stuff trying to make it to the night just
like us. If you ever saw that squinty city that does
your bidding off in the perfect middle of where it
looks little and should never sit still, like an open
window sill displaying a fraying wind blown quill, at
that time before it's light enough out to make it out
but you do make it out and stake it out anyway too. It
doesn't look really real and really it doesn't feel
real. Until you spill your fill into the insatiable
slots and tables and are unable to enable a comeback
at blackjack. Oh yeah, it's real then, my only fiend
friendless friend. Famous beginnings of infamous ends.
It doesn't look like much out in the clutch of such a
much maligned American miracle whip desert full of
silk slips and gapers gripping worthless scrips of
paper and land yachts and booze trips like landlocked
half cocked cruise ships serving the deserving
carefully chosen brazen inert frozen desserts for
small tips. And if you get past the last less than
free neon freon concoction of high octane action for a
silver shivering sliver and a fraction and lose your
shirt but don't get too hurt and turn your back and
make tracks with your slacks on, you'll fall out the
southern side empty as low tide or the inside of
pockets on said trousers. You'll slide south like a
mouth, tooth and gout as if the map was a trap where
the gravity of gravity really will rally and laugh at
your last ditch folly itch and plant you firmly in the
flimsy filthy earth at the first stop on the third
worse third world border, brightly terse and fierce
with vise and mirth that smolders. And out of order is
the order of the odious day. It's the way things stay
this way. And living in corrugated cardboard with a
disregarded dirt floor and yard, for god's sake. Break
the thirst and slake your best misstep in the stagnant
repugnant lake of distaste in a haste to make your
escape and traipse like apes out of the grip back to
Miracle Whip Strip and happily repeated yet regretted
road trips.

I will now go to the skeleton and ponder its ghost.

2008-04-08T12:37:00.005-06:00

The first time I drove across Dewey bridge I was going to Moab to . . . go hiking! Yeah, it was that long ago, before mountain biking.

I slowly tooled south of Cisco, taking in the canyons as they deepened and took me in. Immediately, an eighteen-wheeler with a full compliment of over the sleeper-cab chrome exhaust pipes came barging into my rear view. It was obvious this trucker with the Confederate flag draped across his grill was more concerned with getting past me than safely negotiating the ever tightening twisting two lane. I gladly pulled my rusty Chevy over at the nearest opportunity. The big red lurched forward. It accelerated into the next turn, rocking out of sight. Twin trails of diesel exhaust dissipated into question marks above the canyon walls. I gave it a big head start.

If that eighteen wheeled predatory animal of the interstates could get across, then Dewey Bridge must be a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. I concluded that the stories I had heard about Dewey Bridge must be wrong. As a rabid connoisseur of unique and eccentric America, I was disappointed. It would be like going to Cadillac Ranch only to discover that it was made out of Mazda's.

When I got to the bridge, my disappointment dissipated like the diesel question marks had earlier. The giant chrome-mobile stood static, idling aggressively like a beast straining at the end of its chain. In this case, the end of the chain was Utah Highway 128 at Dewey Bridge. Dewey Bridge swayed gently, the perfect antidote to this dangerous frustrated southern freighter.

Dewey Bridge was every bit as small as it should have been. Possibly the span appeared even smaller and narrower than it would have without the big mean rig at its very edge. It looked like you could have brought Dewey Bridge here on that truck. But you would never be driving that truck across Dewey Bridge. The big trucker sat in his big trucker cab with his big trucker face in his big trucker hands, thinking whatever it is that big truckers think at times like these.

I loved Dewey Bridge at first sight. That peeling yet brilliant white wood, so similar to the white wood of an old roller coaster, was always inviting, never menacing. In subsequent years when I saw it and crossed it in all kinds of horrendous weather, Dewey Bridge was always a protagonist for me, a harbinger of good. After all, I was either coming from or going to another desert adventure when I saw it. The roof rack was always full.

I played around for an hour or so. I walked across and went underneath, checking out its aging assemblage. As I eased onto the span, my pick-up felt big, fat and especially wide. I stopped in the middle and enjoyed the lateral movements of this monument. Its enigmatic dynamics mirrored the bustling brown Colorado below. It was a complimentary piece of man made engineering in this tremendous landscape. The semi sat growling menacingly like a bad mood bent on venting. But it was safely trapped on the other side. It was going to be tough to even turn that monster around. If he had been trying to save time and money, well . . . he didn't.

And now that the gleaming white bridge is gone, I have to go see it. I expect the pillars and the remaining suspension cables will be a visual melancholy. Had it been an intentional arson ,I'd be pissed. As it was a stupid mistake by some kid(s), I'm sad and pissed but more sad than pissed. Don't get me wrong, I think the perpetrator(s) should suffer some punishment/penalty for this, no matter how unintentional their actions. I'm glad not to be the father in that family. But who knows, maybe it was the trucker's grandkid fulfilling his granddad's dying wish of revenge. Southerners never forget.

So this is my Dewey Bridge elegy. I will now go to the skeleton and ponder its ghost.

Top Photo Credit
Bottom Photo Credit

6ix

2008-03-31T00:01:00.000-06:00

Nobody ever comments on my blog.

2008-03-30T11:10:00.001-06:00

It turns out, the recruiters lied.

I joined, where'd the glory go?

Spit shined shoes, blood stained helmet.

This is nothing like the movies.

John Wayne's dead, so is Elvis.

Several titles come from this exercise

2008-03-26T20:28:00.004-06:00

1) Following my feet served me right.

2) Drank too much, stopped, met Bridget.

3) I'll admit it, I love Aspen.

4) Getting up early changed my life.

5) I hate stereotypes, just like everybody.

6) Hyperbole is not an option here.

7) Small city, big world, good combo.

8) He doesn't realise ignorance is bliss.

9) Unique in Hawaii means no tattoos.

10) Zero curiosity about my blood father.

11) I look like my Step-Dad.

12) Took the plates, left the states.

13) I don't understand my Step-daughter.

14) Had I stayed, I'd be dead.

15) It doesn't get better than you.

16) Mom makes money as an artist.

17) Dad's thrifty, he retired at fifty.

18) I retired young, might not again.

19) Study the world with young eyes.

20) Love these words, indefatigable, Juggernaut, harbinger.

21) Vegas wasn't built in a day.

22) Today's indiscretions lead to tomorrow's repercussions.

23) She loves pets more than people.

24) Introverted extrovert drinks beer for balance.

25) Don't corner the pages, use bookmarks.

26) Is bookmarks one word or two?

27) Spell check says bookmark is both.

28) Last three memoirs remain numerically inconclusive.

29) Short man smoked in seventh grade.

30) He never got to the Himalaya.

31) Manhattan Montana or Manhattan New York?

32) Opposites attract but it ain't easy.

33) I got her despite the odds.

34) I'm ambivalent towards ambiguous ignorance.

35) Read, your brain's a muscle too.

36) Exercise your right to work out.

37) Vote even if it doesn't count.

38) What matters most costs the least.

39) See the world first then decide.

40) Don't die because Bush says so.

41) True freedom means deciding for yourself.

42) Don't tell me I'm not patriotic.

43) Fear of being wrong creates fanaticism.

44) I'm already against Bush's next war.

45) Always wanted to be an expat.

46) Colbert is braver than the neocons.

47) A new watershed, 'Dumber than Bush'.

48) Sunrise I'm hungry, Sunset I'm thirsty.

49) Food-shelter-clothing, Sushi-penthouse-lingerie

50) True freedom is a frightening opportunity.

51) Hitch-hiked cross-country before Kerouac.

52) I've been to all fifty states.

53) It could have been much worse.

54) No job, money, future, left home.

55) Ambiguity, the key to political success.

56) He retired and read about traveling.

57) Traveled first, still hope to retire.

58) Worked fifty, died at fifty-one.

59) Biggest fear, boredom, second biggest, excitement.

60) I can't stop writing these things.

61) Life translates well into six words.

62) Why always the same bar stool?

63) Several titles come from this exercise.

64) Dad was eighteen when I arrived.

65) Mom was single when I arrived.

66) Real Dad promised he'd come back.

67) Mom had siblings but not anymore.

68) Only child from a small family.

69) If I hadn't moved away, well?

70) I'm still trying to be better.

71) Clever wordsmith, learned it from Aerosmith.

72) Death is birth's only sister city.

73) Is the beer garden still there?

74) The fireman's field flooded last year.

75) Salmon Creek is out of fish.

76) Hilton, find that on a map.

77) Please say thank you and please.

78) An unspoiled only child is rare.

79) The thing is, worlds do end.

80) At this rate, I better hurry.

81) The desert is under the sea.

82) Grand Canyon is older than God.

83) Welcome, please exit through gift shop.

84) Dirty thoughts kept her body clean.

85) An unlikely candidate is heir apparent.

86) Once again . . . once upon a time.

87) He died on New Years Eve.

88) Abscess makes the tooth grow longer.

89) Three should have had three E's

90) Four is a four letter word.

91) My first home was an incubator.

92) I always wanted a tequila story.

93) He never knew his nick name.

94) Never had a brother I liked.

95) I didn't hit it on purpose.

96) He always meant to come back.

97) I'm not a late bloomer yet.

98) He keeps his artwork well hidden.

99) Arrested development was his saving grace.

100) He drinks coffee when he's hungry.

101) He managed it without a 'career'.

102) Secretly he envied the hobo camps.

103) I couldn't quite stop at 100.

Mirrors

2008-03-15T12:57:00.006-06:00

W stands for Warcriminal. I respect and pity those in this scene. The young blonde boy . . . what he grows up to possibly be is no more his fault than what the young Muslim becomes. And of course, as they try to kill each other, they are nothing so much as mirrors of each other.

If I might

2008-02-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

If I might

If I might, I'd return the favor
Bridgetteania, well, you are my favorite flavor

If you'd like, I will shout it only too loud
Just enough, to top out on the bright cloud

And when I do, I will 'I do' forever

(When I did 'I Do' I did 'I Do' forever)(!?)

*inspired by Kevin Kinney's S.T.A.R.

I will

2008-02-26T17:15:00.001-07:00

I will

I will gladly make more coffee
If you will kindly just get off me
Would you like some cream in it
Or shall I sing a sonnet
If you give me one more minute
I will put some sugar on it

If you call me by my first name
I will happily play your game
And move your piece across the board
Or shall I sing like a bird
And mark your card when you score
And tell you what I just heard

If we stay in this bed all day
What will your nosy neighbors say
And should we listen to them
Or shall I sing to her and him
Or should we shout sarcasm
And then just let the lights go dim

*inspired by Kevin Kinney's S.T.A.R.

Ain't Your Friend

2008-02-25T10:54:00.001-07:00

Ain't Your Friend

Best friend, best man, human being
Hawaii blue collar waterskiing

But when will you understand
Come to understand
That George Bush ain't your friend
Ain't your man

Don't mean to offend
But George Bush ain't your man
Ain't your friend

*inspired by Kevin Kinney's S.T.A.R.

Another Country Love Song

2008-02-24T10:39:00.000-07:00

Another Country Love Song

When it all gets said and done
I'll be the favorite thing you lose

When I'm dead and you're on the run
I'll be the best damn thing you ever got to abuse

But it's a long haul
When you're this wrong
So if it's the wrong song
You should just go ahead and play 'em all

You never did make it through
As it turns out and for heaven's sake
It was a salt flat not a big lake
But your first mirage always looks so true

Still it's a strong pull
When you're getting along
But if it's the wrong kind of strong
You should just go ahead and toss it all

You were so young it's overdone and oversung
But still
You got so stung your young bell got rung
Enough to make you kill

But I was . . .
Just a dumb kid too

I guess that . . .
Didn't occur to you

You kicked me out
You run me down
Pedal to the floor
Tension get all mounting

You hit me once
Or maybe twice
The final count was four
but hey who's counting

You laughed a scoff
As you took off
You think I ain't here no more
I'm with you on your outing

When it gets all said and done
I'll be the favorite thing you lost

When I'm already dead and you're the next one
I'll be the best damn garbage you ever tossed

*inspired by Kevin Kinney's S.T.A.R.

Vegas

2008-02-23T10:47:00.002-07:00

Vegas

Asymmetrical anomaly called Vegas
At its best, a drive by town
At worse, highly contagious

Hyperbolic hubris called Vegas
Five star dining
Otherwise quite tasteless

Neon blocks don't set your clocks in Vegas
Dump your money in the slots
You don't even have to make us

All one can say is at the end of the day
Well, there aint' one
'Cause yesterday don't go away till
Tomorrow's already having too much fun

Last call is just the latest time that you called
Next call will start it up and end it all

Fountains explode and sing pop songs
Every half hour
People watch and scratch and botch
And ride the Eiffel Tower

Vile vibrant vagrant place called Vegas
take all our coins
But please don't change us

Leave us stunned and undone
But don't you ever try to faze us

*inspired by Kevin Kinney's S.T.A.R.

No Vacancy at the Keyring

2008-02-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

No Vacancy at the Keyring

Got me a real full keyring
It makes me a real King

I can make deposits
I can unlock closets

People hear me comin'
I jungle like I'm drummin'

It hangs off my belt-loop just right
Not too footloose and not too uptight

In this corridor called jungle
I'm the only lonely top-tier human
I know exactly
Practically what I'm doin'

And I can be here after everything closed
And I know some things that only I can know
By the hour so generally I go slow
They even give me my very own grey matching clothes

So much better than the striped ones I used to know

There is no vacancy here at my keyring
It's all filled up just like my head says I'm king

*inspired by Kevin Kinney's S.T.A.R.

'Pastafarians Invade Catalina'

2008-02-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

I understand what a treacherous situation we had unwittingly put ourselves in. Now that the Noodly Appendage has touched us, we realize what a perilous time we inhabited.

Photos of Pastafarian flags, tremulous in urbane breezes off Two Harbors, sparked this recollection.

On our honeymoon in 2002, my bride (atheist) and I (a-religious) choppered from Long Beach to Catalina. I was thinking that almost anyone would feel tall stooping to exit a helicopter with head intact as I did so. The village of Avalon can be described as a netherworld of small and 'short' or even 'dwarfed' streets. A fleet of golf-carts, nothing more than 'midget' cars, buzz harmlessly up and down the noodly byways.

We walked the short distance to our accommodation on a little hill. It featured low ceilings, short doors and a tiny bed. The place was short on amenities but did offer a plethora of Zane Grey novels. I still haven't read 'em.

Once we had settled in, we ventured down to the dwarf, er, I mean wharf or harbor or marina. I still felt tall and didn't know why. Was it the euphoria of still having a head or the heady excitement of being on my honeymoon?

It was neither. I had experienced this sensation some years earlier among the indigenous population of landlocked (no pirates) Bolivia.

I/we were tall. It was a midget convention. Boatloads of little people had been infiltrating Avalon all week. It was culminating in this weekend long celebration of small persons.

I realize now that among the hundreds of sail-boat masts, rocking like a drunken forest, not a single Jolly Roger flew. This was a place desperately in need of a pirate intervention.

I would bet that not a single midget was at Two Harbors or Avalon during the Pastafarian Invasion.

Spaghettily yours. Ramen!

Image Credit

Thirty years ago, right about now

2008-01-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Broncos were going to the Super Bowl. He was going to Denver, each for the first time. His mom decked him out in 'Orange Crush' orange and hid his Vikings’ purple. But, he wasn't moving to Denver because of the Broncos. He wasn't 'moving' to Denver at all.

He became a skier when Jim's name changed to Dad and his changed to Williams. His new dad grew up skiing in Minnesota and introduced it to his new family, a wife and young son, her only child. They took to it heartily. The little guy gripped the rope-tows for all he was worth in his mother’s old oversized mittens. He made little uphill progress as the frozen tow slipped through his frozen mitts. He’d hang on mightily as the T-bar went up around his seven year old neck and shoulders, but never let go, riding proudly next to his dad. The first and only dad he would ever know. Sometimes he cried looking down the intermediate steeps of Lower Brewer. But he learned to ski quickly enough. He beamed with inspiration as he watched his dad effortlessly ski off the ledge into Last Will. Then he would race down Zigzag to watch him come out the bottom. Years later, he would pay his dad the ultimate compliment by changing places with him. But, much as he enjoyed it, he wasn't going out to Colorado to ski.

All he really cared about in high school was his girlfriend, Yvette, cars, art, partying, and skiing. It would be his Nova, the fifth car he owned between ages 15 and 18 that would get him to Colorado. Not that he drove it there. Yvette was a black haired beauty looking like a woman faster than the other girls and he was quite shocked when his friends told him she wanted to go out with him. But she did. They were a tight item almost all through high school. They broke up for the last time halfway through their junior year. He promptly became a senior and graduated a year early. All he really cared about was his car, art, partying and skiing.

With his broken Nova in the garage for the winter, he drove a $25.00 Chevelle. He blew the drive shaft one winter day with a carload of friends on the frozen beach road. He couldn't afford the $20.00 replacement so he junked it in the same salvage yard that held the remains of his first three cars. His first car, the T-bird, was a '68 and he spent the better part of his 15th year getting it unstuck . . . in his driveway. He pulled the black bucket seats, made a couch and junked the $50.00, 5000 pound beast. He shag orange carpeted the entire inside of his next car, everything, visors, dashes, door panels, ceiling and, of course, the floor. The twenty dollar Radio Shack tape deck sounded amazing. Pink Floyd, Yes, Moody Blues, Genesis, The Fireside Theater, Aerosmith, Beatles, Led Zeppelin and, embarrassingly, R.E.O. Speed Wagon kept the Plymouth rocking all through its short life. Unlike the T-Bird, he actually drove the Belvedere. He blew the engine on North Ave. He junked it. The next car set him back $250.00. It was by far the most expensive set of wheels he had owned to date. But, driving down the wrong side of the road one night on purpose, led inevitably to driving down the wrong side of the ditch on purpose. That led to hitting a side road broadside, not on purpose, launching it and fortunately not hurting any of the requisite carload of friends. The Chevy II didn't steer so well after that night. He junked it.

Hitch-hiking twenty miles one way to work sucks. Hitch-hiking twenty miles one way, to work from eleven at night to seven a.m., sucks. Hitch-hiking twenty miles one way, to work eleven to seven, in the winter, in Western New York, sucks. Leaving at nine to walk to the corner to start hitch-hiking twenty miles one way, to work from eleven to seven pumping gas for $2.65 an hour sucks too. But, after the Chevelle died, that’s what he did.

Most roads are connected web-like to a multitude of other roads. Otherwise, why would you be driving on one? It's fair to say that the very reason people drive on most roads is to get to some other road. Like most roads, North Ave. was connected to a world of other roads. But, North Ave. also had an end, and not an arbitrary name change end, or a T intersection end, it physically and abruptly ended at the lake, as all roads that lead to any of the Great Lakes must. Granted, Lake Ontario is the smallest Great Lake. The least 'great,' I guess. But, you still couldn't see across it. They didn't play on it as kids. It might as well have been an ocean. It was the polluted northern limit of their known world. In fact, there was a different country on the other side. That’s a big concept for a little kid. It was an immense dangerous repository in the age of acid rain. No matter where they went, they always knew where the lake was. Even in Rochester or sixty miles away skiing at Swain, they knew which way was north. Which way was up. It was instinctual.

He grew up one mile from that lake. Basically, he was hitch-hiking from the proverbial end of the road. He had a mile's worth of traffic that very occasionally came off the Parkway onto North Ave to even try to get a ride from. When he eventually did get picked up, at the furthest, they were going to Hilton, five miles. At least then, he had a village's worth of traffic instead of a mile's worth. But still, that sucks.

October's pumpkins froze as the November nights hurried to become December nights. The mercury got short on the thermometers like a cold old man shivering in the dark. Traffic thinned like blood that time of year, that time of night. The Nova sat static in the garage, not running and in need of money. The young owner of five cars in three years stood on the side of the road, contemplating its vastness, freezing in need of a ride.

He might have only had 19 Marlboros in his hard-pack. There might have only been 7 ponies in his Miller 8 pack. His gas tank and wallet might have always been on E. But, he managed to do a couple things right. He was smart enough to, A. graduate a year early and, B. realize as he stood there, frozen under the streetlight on North Ave. barely mobile enough to move his arm, hand and thumb to the rare car, trying to get somewhere he didn't want to go, that there must be some other way somewhere to make a go at this brand new post high school life. If this was the end all, well, a person might just go ahead and end it all.

It was his idea to go to Texas. But, in his eighteen year old wisdom, he insisted on two rules. The first rule being that they have three hundred dollars each, the second being that they had to have their own three hundred each. No Mark loaning Tab a hundred to make up the difference, to be paid back when they were all rolling in it down in Texas. It was to be the four of them. Mark, Mark, Tab and him. As the time to depart neared, it indeed turned out as he had feared. Mark would be loaning Tab a hundred so they would each have three hundred. And, by the way, they would be towing Mark's Camaro behind the Bonneville so he could put a new engine in it down there in Texas once they were rolling in dough. He could appreciate the sentiment. That's why he was inspired to go somewhere in the first place, to make enough money to fix up his Nova. But, he stood his ground. He kept to the idea of two rules. So, Mark, Mark and Tab went without him. In fact, it had been their going away party the night he had gone ditch driving and trashed his third car, the Chevy II.

His dad worked at Kodak, 'The Great Yellow Mother'. So did his mom. Kodak had been strictly Rochester for its entire hundred year existence. But, along about '75, they opened a factory in Fort Collins. His dad's friend, Steve White, and many others had transferred out there. Steve White and his wife came home for Christmas, Christmas '77. Inexplicably, they brought a Denver Post to his dad's house when they visited. Equally unexplainable, the son saw it, picked it up and went to the help wanted pages. Absolutely unexpectedly, he saw page upon page of help wanted ads. Loading dock help wanted, no experience necessary, $5.00 per hour! Columns full of these greeted his growing grin and churning brain, inventing a brand new idea on the spot. Denver, he'd go to Denver, $5.00 an hour being almost twice what he was making at Hess. It wouldn't take long to save enough money to return and fix up the Nova.

He wasn't going to Colorado because of the Broncos. He didn't move to Colorado to ski. The Broncos (Donkeys) lost; being the first of four Super Bowls that they would eventually lose. They were the first team to tie his former favorite team, the Vikings, for the most lost Super Bowls. The team closest to his hometown, the Buffalo Bills, would join that dubious crowd soon after. To this day, they have each lost four Super Bowls.

He was an eighteen year old in that Irish bar in Denver watching the Broncos lose, all swathed in orange. Colorado may have lost but it is undeniable that he won by going to Colorado.

Through a dirty, tinted, fifty-five-mile-per-hour window, he caught a first-light glimpse of mountains. Pink tinged and gleaming, they, unbeknownst to him, lodged themselves firmly in his subconscious. But, buildings quickly barged in and tightened up around him like a front line, another city. This city was different though. If, for no other reason than the fact that this was the one printed on his one way ticket.

Feeling like a tooth that had been trying to get out of a mouth for a long time, he exited that bus for the last time after three days straight. He vowed then and there that he would hitch-hike before he would do that again. He got no further than the terminal before he was 'befriended'. He would always remember his new friend's first words to him. "Man, how you doing? At least somebody is friendly around here." The new friend said, "Where you staying?" knowing full well that this kid had no idea where he was 'staying'. They got a room at the Y.M.C.A. and, in the morning, the new friend was gone with about a hundred of his three hundred dollars and the white braided ski sweater that his parents had given him for Christmas. He wasn't going to Colorado to ski but he was a skier and he was going to Colorado. This was the second day in a row that his life changed forever. This was the day that he made the long distance call home, quite likely the first long distance call he had ever initiated. His mom sounded so very far away. And she was. His tears went down and he could hear hers. The buildings towered over him menacingly, leaning hard on him but providing no warmth or welcome. But then he focused so intently on his mother's voice that all peripheral movements, sounds, etc. raced away into the deepest distance and joined everything else that had ever been familiar to him. He didn't notice. Just as he had not noticed his friends recede in high school when he devoted himself totally to Yvette. When they broke up, he noticed. He found himself a loner where he had once been very popular. He sought refuge in the library and 'pretended' to read books. That's why he gave his student counselor the ultimatum. “You have two choices.” he told her. “You can either do what ever you need to do to make me a senior . . . or not. But, either way I'm not going to be here next year.”

Both his parents gave him their best fifteen hundred miles away encouragement. They talked for a long time. He didn’t want to hang up. He knew that regardless of their expressed love and devotion, once they disconnected, he would feel more alone than before he had called. And that was the most alone he had ever felt. He was right. He had been in Denver a few days by this time and didn’t much care for it. He hadn’t actually applied for any one of all those jobs in all those columns. He was a country kid. What the hell was a loading dock anyway? With a newspaper in hand, he returned to his room at the Y. He counted his money and it didn’t take very long.

He visited the help-wanted pages again and then he saw it, ‘Ski resort jobs available, Keystone Colorado’. Without hesitation he packed, checked out and took the trek back to the bus station. Yes, they did have tickets to Keystone, Colorado. He bought one one-way. The bus stopped, he stepped off into the mountains and a new and never imagined better life, but not into a town.
Keystone in January of 1978 was not so big, especially from Highway Six. He went into the only building he could see and applied for a job. “Yes, we have plenty of jobs. But, do you have a place to live?” “Ah, well, I just got off the bus a half hour ago.” The interviewer suppressed a smile and suggested, “Well, if you find a place, come back and we will put you to work.” The young traveler responded, “Okay, how about if I come back tomorrow?” This time the interviewer smiled broadly and repeated that he should come back once he had found a place to live. The meeting concluded. They shook hands amiably and the young man prepared to depart. At the door, as an afterthought he asked, “Oh yeah, one more question. Is there a town around here?” He was directed down the hill toward Dillon.

Walking down the road at nine thousand feet for the first time in his life, combined with the clearest, bluest, driest air he had ever experienced, left him breathless and exhilarated. He would remember this walk for the rest of his life. With mountains on all four sides, he was firmly in the mountains. He had heard talk in Denver about being in the mountains, but Denver was near the mountains, not in the mountains. Here it was all different and there was no going back. He wondered what the man had meant when he had said, ‘if you find a place to live.’ How do you find a place to live? He never had to do that before. Even when it was just him and his mom, they always had a place to live. Then his dad came along and swooshed them both off to the big house in the country that he lived in ‘til he left home.

He didn’t really know how far this Dillon place was and it was the most beautiful day he had ever seen, so he didn’t hitch-hike. He just enjoyed walking in the Rocky Mountains that January day. A little brown building with a big brown sign came into view, rising slowly above the snow banks like a curious animal. It was a Tourist Information Center. He thought maybe they could tell him how to find a place to live. Besides, it was the only structure he had seen so far. It was certainly an unusual question for the friendly lady working the counter. But she didn’t miss a beat and was on the phone before she barely answered him. “Okay, do you know where the Interstate is?” she asked him. “Sorry, no, I don’t.” She had just talked to a friend of hers and proceeded to give him instructions to get to the trailer down in Silverthorne that he could move into that day if he’d like to. He hitched to Silverthorne, met his new landlady, moved in and returned to Keystone the next day asking about those jobs just like he said he would. Nobody told him it was supposed to be hard to find a place to live, so it wasn’t. Ignorance is bliss.

There were two house trailers butted up to each other making an L shape. Each one was divided into three little hovels with two beds, a bath and a small stove in a paneled square of a room. He noticed immediately that his new home was # 1A. You have to get your sources of pride wherever you can find them when you’re eighteen and just starting out. It was fifty dollars a week. That seemed like a lot. Hell, in New York, he could buy a car for fifty dollars. Nevertheless, he was happy to have it and started his employment at Keystone a couple days later.

Keystone was owned by Ralston Purina in those days. He started his climb up the corporate ladder at the bottom rung. He was a parking lot attendant. He quickly deduced that to be a successful parking lot attendant, you had to be there when the cars were. That coincided almost directly with the times a person would otherwise be skiing. During the mid-day break, he and his coworkers would grab garbage bags and hike a little ways up the slopes and slide back down in them. You couldn’t steer them or stop them (much like some of his cars) and if you put the bag on just right, you couldn’t see either. This provided some funny entertainment. The skiers didn’t necessarily think it was all that funny, hence the incentive to cover your face for the descent. The last thing you needed was some skier noticing you as that kid that was flying down the hill in a garbage bag and now was the afternoon parking lot attendant. That was all fine and good, but growing up as a skier, he knew the difference between garbage bag sliding and skiing. Seeking out different employment that would provide ski time proved to be his next and final step up the rungs of the corporate ladder. Although some might dismiss his move as a step down a rung, he felt otherwise. He eagerly transferred from parking lot attendant to . . . bus washer. Not bus driver, but bus washer. Of necessity, you wash buses when skiers are not on them. That would, of course, be at night. He skied every day. There was the ’64 International named Lurch with a split axle transmission. The washing bay was a tight squeeze and he bent a mirror or two that winter. There was a lot of snow that season. He was skiing in the Colorado Rockies. He was in the mountains. He was out of Denver. His dreams hadn’t come true, but only because he had never thought to dream this dream.

Fifty dollars a week was steep. He needed a roommate. Of course he didn’t know how to get a roommate either. He did not go back to the Tourist Information Center, although it wasn’t such a crazy idea. He hitch hiked back and forth from Silverthorne to Keystone. Every day, he walked under the I-70 overpass heading to and from work. An old white Ford pulled over one day as he headed home. They struck up a conversation. The guy that picked him up was done with Colorado. The Interstate was five miles down the road and he was going to get on the east bound on ramp right then and go home to Morton, Illinois. He’d been looking for a place to live for the last couple of weeks and had been sleeping in his car. He didn’t get on the Interstate. He moved in that day. The new roommate had most of his possessions stored down in Denver and went for them the next day. He would admit weeks later that since he was about to move in with a guy from New York, he expected everything to be gone when he returned. Luckily for him, Hilton, New York is a far cry, figuratively and literally from New York, New York.

He needed another job to augment the bus washing gig. His new roommate got a job at the Ramada Inn and heard that they were hiring at the Village Inn Pancake House next door. He went there looking for a job, expecting a dishwasher position, (apparently he was good at washing things) they asked him if he would like to be a waiter. He was the only guy on the floor. It was him and the waitresses. He skied every day. He washed buses a couple nights a week for a ski pass. He waited tables most other nights, for tips, meals, a paycheck and flirting.

A gang of young friends quickly formed as often seems to be the case at that age. They skied hard, partied hard, worked hard and actually could save some money. He found out the hard way that you had to be twenty one to drink in Colorado. He tried to buy a Coors at the bar near the house, the O.D.I. The bartender took one look at his New York state driver’s license, stating that he was eighteen, (drinking age in New York at the time) and escorted him to the door. His new roommate bought beer and they drank at home. Seeing as how they had an entire third of a standard size mobile home to spread out in, they got another roommate and a dog, a big dog. When his Mom and Aunt came out from Hilton to visit, they stayed with them in the trailer. He made sure his Mom saw the # 1A. He wanted her to be proud of him. She was.

Spring suddenly neared and the ski season would be ending soon. So would their jobs. Everything was a new adventure to him, including all those records by all those musicians he had never heard of that his new roommate owned. R.E.O. was quickly leaving in their Speed Wagon. He was singing to Bonnie Raitt’s latest release ‘Give It Up’ when suddenly his new roommate burst through the door in a rush. With the music still cranked, he was given one minute to decide. “Do you want to go to Jamaica with me and the rest of the gang for a week for a hundred dollars? The clock is ticking.” He didn’t know what a Jamaica was but could see his new roommate’s excitement and so said yes with twenty five seconds to spare. A couple of the girls in the gang had been spending the last few summers working in California. They promised that if they came to California with them after Jamaica, they could get jobs for the summer.

He had never flown on a commercial airliner before. As soon as the ski season ended, they moved out of the trailer and traveled. The first time he flew was a Sunday. He flew the next two Sundays too. He discovered that you could spend your money on airline tickets instead of, say, carburetors and chrome wheels. He called his dad in April and said, “Dad, I’m going to this place called Jamaica for a week with my new friends and then I’m moving to this place called Yosemite in California with them. And you can just get rid of that car.” That’s how his 1969 Nova S.S. with the Hurst four speed, traction bars, chrome rear wheels, black bucket seats and a Holley 650 ‘double pumper’ carburetor mounted on a chrome high-rise manifold, supported by a 396 cubic inch engine that barely fit under the hood, under the hood got him to Colorado.

He owned skis back home. He hadn’t taken them to Colorado. Like I said, he wasn’t moving to Colorado to ski.

Ellie welcoming me home after 3 months

2007-12-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

a work in progress

2007-11-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

The edge of the deathly flat plain.

That's where the book said we were. It was deathly. It was flat. It was a plain. But, I never saw any edge. We didn't cross a river, climb a ridge or skirt a shore. When I stood on the running-board, I got a clear, over-the-top view of everything. Or I should say, nothing. When I looked off in any direction, every direction, it felt as if there were too many directions. But, no matter how many extra directions there might be, there was never anything to see. That's why I kept looking. I couldn't get a sense of direction.

We struggled on into Hagerman. We felt like we were smuggling, or at least we should be because this would be an excellent place to not get caught.

A string beany, developmentally arrested skeletal frame lanked our way on the dominoed sidewalk. His head hung straight down. The feebly forced constantly spitted spit dropped listlessly. There was no arc, no dynamics, just pure boredom manifested in liquid form. I thought maybe this cretin was spitting as a passive aggressive gesture suggesting he didn't live here 'cause he wanted to see out-of-towners in his local grocery. I quickly decided that it didn't matter. If I was him I'd spit too. Better than doing nothing.

The few other people around treated him as they treated us, which is to say, indifferently. We went a couple blocks further into what had at one time been neighborhoods. They were now vacant lots with lines and wrinkles suggesting where driveways, foundations, swing sets and lives had once prospered. A man and a boy approached in a slow tilted little truck and stopped to chat us up. He was wondering about our Rocketbox and asked of it inquiringly. Our black Toyota with the Colorado tags stood out well enough on its own. But the Rocketbox gave us the added element of looking like visitors from some far away galaxy, some advanced life-form just arriving and bringing all their stuff too. Maybe we were from Roswell. It's not that far away. And nobody really knows what happened to those aliens.

But, truth be known, we were just humans like the man and the boy. We were here because Bridget's Dad was born here. And her Grandfather had been the doctor way back when. We told the man this. He pointed out an old grey house standing alone. It was just begging to be torn down. He informed us that the woman that lived there might have known him and would we like to go meet her. We passed on this opportunity and probably shouldn't have. We were about to push on further into the deathly flat plain and see if we could make Vaughn today.

Bridget's Grandfather had owned land in Vaughn and there was some uncertainty as to if the property was still in the family or not. We didn't have an address or anything. So, we just wandered around the abandoned train station and I took a few photos in the fading light. We snuck around in a couple old derelict storefronts. This was the kind of place where there was still furniture and other household accoutrement inside. Years later Bridget would buy me a book with photos of the abandoned Great Plains and some of these very buidings were in it. We saw no one in Vaughn.

Abandoned couches

2007-11-29T21:04:00.000-07:00

Upcountry as I drove around,
I found a corner with a mound.
A sign sayin' no dumpin'
and a rank and file of appliances.
Ovens, dishwashers, big ol' square ones.
On a corner up in heaven.
At least fifteen, probably thirty five.
I scrambled up the hillside.
Begged and pleaded for one more picture.
Promised camera I'd be stricter.
But it didn't believe me.
So I didn't get corrupted scenery.
Ocean glowing in the way down background.
Big ol' sign sayin' can't get to Kihei town.
Even if it's just right over down there.
This is playin' we call this fair.

inspired in some small part by Abandoned Couches

Ellie attacking the fan

2007-11-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Hi Ho Hi Ho

2007-11-05T20:15:00.001-07:00

running on the beach

2007-11-05T20:02:00.001-07:00

Sere, tawdry, virid, obdurate, vacuous

2007-10-15T20:50:00.000-06:00

There he stood, vacuously obdurate, all proud of the sere hunk of tawdry metal that hadn't run in years, barely visible in the virid tangles of twisted Kudzu, swearing like he had for years that he was going to fix it up, make it run again.

It could be suggested, I suppose, that his old metallic blue Corvette is tawdry. It certainly is in the flashy part of the meaning of the word. But, I must say that although it might look it, given all its cracks (fiberglass doesn't dent, it cracks and breaks off), this sports car is anything but cheap.

The hot rod purist and especially the old car restorers would find it nothing short of an obdurate sin that he 'glassed over the original headlights and stuck 'em in the grille. But most obdurate of all is the secret that I reveal here. It might say it on the hood scoop, but there isn't really a 427 in it.

Putting 427 tags on a car that has a 350 in it is the most vacuous thing you could do. The numbers mean nothing. I'm not saying it's not still a fast, scary car to drive. But, you'd have to be plenty vacuous yourself to even think of doing that. 'Real' car aficionados are more inclined to the 'Sleeper' mode. That's the exact opposite. You stick the biggest damn engine you can get under the hood without having to put a scoop on. You keep the car completely stock or only tastefully and subtly customized. You leave the original engine cubic inches tags on the car. So, it might say 289 on your Mustang, a decent enough power plant, but you have a 351 c.i. Cleveland shoehorned into the engine compartment. You might even do the inverse of the 'Vette. It says 350, but you are barely hiding a monster 427 under the hood. Chrysler is an excellent one to go Sleeper with. You get some old Le Mans or even an early Goat, pull the 283 and drop in a fully blown Hemi.

Sometimes the most Sleeper of all is the unfinished project. A sere, grey patched, jacked up but not quite right classic, caught somewhere between decline and delight, love of some teen aged boy's life screaming anonymously around country roads is often the fastest thing out there. If for no other reason than that the kid behind the wheel is fearless and free for the first time in his life. The first time a person feels freedom, all they want to do is run around. At the speeds he prefers, the rural landscape goes virid with all the subtle greens of woods, fields, and lawns blurring.

I don't know if a 'sere' hunk can also be 'tawdry'. What a great exercise. I've been meaning to do this for a while.

I luv' You all. Steve

Silly Gringos

2007-10-14T18:14:00.000-06:00

My biggest hope is that they thought we were actually snorkeling recreationally there.

We were the only white people on the beach. Although I was pink. There were other people. Locals. They were shuttling back and forth off loading a fishing boat. There were refrigerated trucks on the beach and as soon as one was full it departed for La Paz about ten dusty miles away. The brown wives were busying themselves erecting tarps for shade to cook in. Men were zooming out and back to the big boat. Some of them were taking a break and drinking beer in the new shade. The kids, ranging in age from all the ranges available, toddler to teen were playing around in the water and messing around in our kayak. Bridget, Rachel and I were playing too. We were having an especially fun splashing festival.

It never did fit quite right. My knuckles are all fat from a childhood spent being a boy. It was beautiful and platinum. We had been married less than a year. It never had actually come off before. It just rocked around on my finger between the joints like an restless captive. We were going to get it refitted, someday. Never had to. Suddenly I froze and yelled for Bridget to do the same. The ring had gotten free. I'm sure it was sinking into the murk before we even stopped moving. I thought though that my only reference point would be Bridget. That's why I asked her not to move. Rachel brought me the snorkel and mask. I decided I didn't need the fins. I proceeded to look for the ring. We were in about two feet of water basically at the shore.

Maybe we were five feet out. The bottom was perfectly suited to never seeing a wedding ring again. Silty moving sand created little underwater dunes that were constantly changing with the rocking shoreline. Ugly little shore fish didn't even dart away, they just moved with the current, in and out, also. I went for quite a while. It was my less than year old wedding band after all. And my buoy of reference was my bride. You know, the person that picked and paid for it. I would have spent a long time anyway, but this inspired me to a greater time frame. I was snorkeling for a half hour to forty five minutes while the Mexican kids frolicked nearby. I didn't go further than I thought my ring could have. So, I snorkeled for three quarters of an hour in two feet of water, five feet from shore in a tight circumference around Bridget. I was quite oblivious to what was going on around me. Bridget stood there patient as a pier piling.

Eventually though I surrendered to the eventuality that was basically obvious after five minutes. That's the kind of thing that you either come up with the ring in the first minute or not at all. Ask me about Halsey's wedding ring story at Trevor's wedding sometime. We gave it up. We decided then and there not to let it ruin the day or the trip. We went up to the lone beach-side restaurant, the Giggling Marlin, and had a good lunch. Rachel hung me upside down from one of those things that fisherman hang their marlin from on the dock. Bridget took the picture. Jose motorboated us back down to the house.

We went into Los Barriles later that day. Like all tourist towns, there were hippies and locals making and selling jewelry on the streets. We looked for a temporary replacement. We perused a lot of people's work. We were about to give up and come away empty handed when we saw one we both liked. Tried it on. Fit better than my real ring ever did. We forked over seven big ones and I went home with a wedding ring. I'm still wearing it. Lots of people notice it and mention it. I get to tell this story. It's silver and it has two separate rings that are woven together in a really cool design. I say really cool design because I have no idea what kind of knot it is. We think it represents marriage well. That was five years ago.

Bridget remembers the place being called the 'Bahia de los Suenos, meaning Bay of Dreams and I remember it as the Bahia de los Muertos, Bay of the Dead. She's right. Like I said, I've been married five years now. It's the Bahia de los Suenos. and I just hope those kids thought we were snorkeling there 'cause we thought that's where you would snorkel.

Silly Gringos.

Picture Credit

I should have known

2007-10-14T14:16:00.000-06:00

Well, of course, I should have known.

But I never do and yet I am never surprised.

Robin and Laurie are out of town for a couple weeks. It didn't occur to me to remember the exact date that they would be returning. I remember that they will be back before Bridget and Rachel leave. Thought that was enough information.

After all, Christine generously offered for them to stay at Puamana. Christine will be here "the whole time." So yesterday, Saturday, Danny finally casually told me exactly when Christine will be here. He may very well not have known before then. Maybe Christine didn't even know till then. That variable should have been communicated to us.

Bridget and Rachel arrive on Thursday, the 18th. Oh, well, Christine arrives Sunday. Yawn. Dan suggested, Bridget and Rachel will have to rough it with us here at 303 till then. Negative. No way, they would cry. And rightly so. Most people would, male or female. 3o3 is kinda rough. I've been lucky or unlucky enough to have been around trying housing situations enough that I'm somewhat impervious. I mean I actually like the third world.

I took the news in stride because I knew they could stay with Robin. It then dawned on me that Robin and Laurie will still be in Costa Rica, I think. There's the rub. Even with Robin and Laurie out of town, it would have been no problem for Bridget and Rachel to stay there. If we had known the actual dates that Puamana would be available. Of course, with Robin and Laurie in Costa Rica . . . actually, I will call Robin's cell. I'll e-mail him also if I can find his address. You never know in this communication age. I wasn't overly concerned about their return date. Now, it's scramble time.

I thought maybe Bridget and Rachel should change their tickets and arrive on Sunday. And they could change their return also. That, of course, would involve two ticket change charges each. A couple hundred bucks. Plus, that would have them here longer into another friend/family/fellow-freak member's visit. Not optimal.

Bridget and Rachel are getting to stay at Puamana for free, a place that rents for several hundred a night, so how to complain? It's just a pain that will cost money. Everything is so 'general' with Dan. Often time when the specifics are finally revealed, they don't correlate. Or, some bullshit unnecessary complication arises that would have been a non-issue had the details been presented originally.

I want this trip to be really good for them. Staying at 303 for three nights would not facilitate this desire. It would taint the rest of their trip and maybe ever scar them for life! God knows I've got scars from my friends.

So, I should have known. I'm sorry, Bridget. I'll find a place for you two.

Plus, the seventh floor is expected to finally open for us on Wednesday. Usually it takes a day, more like two till we can get in. Making that day Friday. We'll see. It'll all work out. I'll do what ever I have to to assure that. I remembered why I was so willing to work epic shifts last year. It was because I know I can do epics. That knowledge was learned from biking.

Yesterday was an epic. I may have mistakenly exaggerated though. After reconsulting the map, it appears that it was about seventy five miles total with twenty miles of brutal head winds from mile thirty five to sixty five. And I had (comparatively) medium head winds for all but five to ten of the other miles. So, if I need to pull some twelve to fourteen hour shifts at Constructionland, I happily will.

Lots of rainbows

2007-10-12T17:40:00.001-06:00

She has a brand new baby girl. That changes things. She smiles when she has her in her arms. So does the babe. With an infant rubbing up against her heavily tattooed chest, she looks less intimidating. When she smiles, well, she has good teeth. I've never seen them before. I've never seen her smile before. It almost seems that beyond a certain number of tattoos, bad teeth would become a prerequisite. She has plenty (of tattoos that is).

Tattoos are different here, figuratively, culturally and actually. The designs are different. A lot of awesome shapes and designs dominate. Suns, birds, wings and anatomically enhancing or influenced patterns are much more prevalent than the more typically mainland trailer-park motor-head, biker, ex-con type hearts, skull and crossbones, (x)girlfriend names, Moms and homemade jailhouse tattoos screaming for attention in the dives and blighted bars back in Cali.

A great book and surf cult classic is Tapping the Source by author Kem Nunn. The title proclaims it 'The all time great surfing novel' and many agree. Like many great works, the acclaimed subject, in this case surfing, is only a small part of the story.

Everything that happens is because of surfing but it's not a, 'Dude, I caught the biggest wave, I hung ten in the longest tube . . .' book. It's about the culture. It's about surfing the way Fargo is about Fargo. The movie, Point Break, was loosely based on this book. I mention it here because the protagonist, in a furious bout of anger and drunkenness, gets a tattoo. It's big, graphic, highly visible and influences things to come. That's all. The interested reader will read it.

And let's not forget gang tattoos. Apparently that is big and getting bigger on the mainland. I don't know about Oahu. I have read a trilogy of novels set in the underworld, underbelly, drug fueled side streets of Honolulu and beyond. The author is Chris McKinney. The books are The Tattoo, Queen of Tears and Bolohead Road. I recommend them in that order to anyone inclined and curious about the real world in the shadows beyond any so called paradise where tourists run amok spilling cash and rushing frantic in the name of vacation.

Heaven forbid that the last tender departs for the mother cruise ship before they have spent today's cash. And the locals run amok, rushing frantic to work in the name of vocation. It's not all Tiki torches, leis and zany tee shirt shops. It never is. In that harsh, extra-dark, moving shadow cast by the Tiki torch lies dangers as contrasting as the flame to the shadow itself. A shadow so dark, it tints ink blue and hints at the truths beyond. The rainbow on the license plates is accurate enough. There are rainbows practically daily. There are pots 'o gold too. But like any rainbow, most of it is an illusion, a trick of the light. The pot 'o gold being but a small percentage of the whole and mostly carted away 'off island' as they say.

It's also typically stacked, as in any robust economy, that as little money as possible goes to the hardest workers. The poor cashiers at the ubiquitous ABC stores are pulling down minimum wage. The bartenders and wait staffs do better and are curiously mostly whites or at least non-local. The tribes by oil fields and diamond mines come to mind. Different continent, same shit. If there is a gang presence in Hawaii, it's primarily confined to Oahu. Maui doesn't seem to be affected by them. But I know that just because I haven't seen it, it doesn't mean that there isn't a gang presence here. It may be just fledgling or small or both. Maybe it's over in Wailuku or Kahalui.

I'm in Lahaina. LalaLahainaland. It's always sunny. It's always busy. Too busy. It's always the perfect temperature. Lot's of rainbows. I know there is a drug problem here. It's not 'Maui Wowie' or 'dakine bud' either. Contrary to propaganda, marijuana is rarely a problem drug. It makes people funny, stupid, think they are funny, inspired, creative, lazy, silly, maybe even serious but not violent. In fact it mellows violence. I've seen it. But there is 'Ice' here. I think Ice is a form of crack. Or it might be meth. Yeah, it's meth. Luckily I don't know. But I have been blatantly 'stalked' by a craze-eyed teenager near the Banyan Tree. At first I was thinking all like, 'fuck you man, I can walk here if I want.' Then I wised up. Teens are potentially the most unpredictable and dangerous, thinking that they are bulletproof and all. It wasn't about my rights. This kid was high and menacing. A harbinger of trouble if ever there was one. I swallowed my pride and ego and departed the scene. I've learned a few things as I've gotten older. It's supposed to be violently addicting, cheap and easy to get.

This, all in a society that already proudly publicly proclaims its ethnicity and/or racism on tee shirts and in attitude. There is also 'tagging' here. Graffiti. That can be a sign of gangs or at least menacing, gang imitating wannabes. Tattoos are as ubiquitous as the ABC stores. But they more closely resemble the original source, being of course, Polynesia. I think the traditional tattoos are pretty amazing. I'm almost thinking I wouldn't mind getting one. As it is, I proclaim my individuality by being one of the few not sporting a single one. If I were to get one, it would have to be a design I draw. Being an artist and everything. I could see it being heavily influenced by the historically significant ones.

I do have a brand new scar prominently displayed on the back of my right hand. I managed to rip a gash in it responding to the jolt I took at work one day. Unfortunately my hand was in a light fixture when I instinctively pulled it out. The scar is curiously very Hawaii shaped. If you look at a map of the islands, you will notice that they are lined up in a distinct arc. I've got that arc. I can tell people that tattoos don't hurt enough and that I am more into body decoration by mutilation. Much like the above mentioned tribes by the oil and diamond mines in Africa. The scar really is Hawaii. Lemonade I know, the glass is half full. But, I do wear gloves at work now. And I make sure the power is off.

If I get a tattoo, it will also be influenced by the symbol for hazardous materials. It's kinda' funny, hopefully not too true, but mostly, I think it's a really cool symbol. Danny used to say that if he ever got a tattoo it would be the Underwriters Laboratories symbol. U.L. listed. I might go do some designs to see what I get. Bridget and Rachel will be here next week for a ten day visit. We'll see.

Oh yeah, one more thing, my Steven Wright type comment; 'I have tattoos, my whole body is covered in them, but I used skin colored ink'.

Read the books.

At least I think it's her baby. Another regular at this Internet cafe just left with the infant in a stroller. Babysitter, Mom, Auntie? I don't know but I'll find out.

And ice melts fast here

2007-10-07T19:28:00.001-06:00

But, as you know, I'm no nature freak.

You know, the hemp-wearing, dread-locked, sleepy-eyed, mellow-man types, playing prophet and strolling the streets of Telluride or Marquette playing lazy flutes breathlessly and whisper-like or softly tapping a homemade drum. In public and among each other, they only eat organic tofu cooked over fertilizer fires.

You know. They are full Vegan, militantly pedestrian (except when they drive their hidden cars), flowing robed phonies being all in tune with nature and wearing burning incense in their hair while looking upon the masses with a combination of contempt and benevolent superiority. They rest (actually they never 'rest', they contemplate, they do yoga, they even trance, but they never 'rest'. It's all about the vernacular.) like Buddha's cross-legged, palms held high and clasped together, slowly rocking like a Weeble that wobbles but won't fall down. They play the penniless mystic and shun the occasional unsolicited handout.

They are playing 'prophet', not profit. That's easier to do when you have Dad's platinum secretly ensconced in your Jesus sandals. Furtively glancing at the world with a slightly bowed head, they expertly fumble nonchalantly with the alms they carry. The worry beads are getting worn down for no reason.

It's all an act. They look at the earth as if they are not of this world or they are more of this world than anyone else. They love twigs and flowers. They would never cut/kill grass. But, they will happily justify cutting philosophy class or art theory to go to (actually they never 'go to', they journey, they wander, they even seek, but they never 'go to'. It's all about the vernacular) a Rainbow gathering or Burning Man. Although they prefer lesser known gatherings, Rainbow gatherings are so main-stream, Burning Man is too commercial.

Usually it's a journey of self discovery or self imposed suffering of some kind. They repeat to themselves, "Seriously, no Twinkies till I get out past Green River somewhere." It's their secret mantra. They carry evidence of their secrets on their sleeve. The ones that they want regular people to think they have, that is. They keep the actual secrets secret, but, they desperately need to know that everyone knows they have secrets.

Hoping that normal people care about them, notice them and even envy them is a big motivator. They imagine mere mortals having long conversations about them, trying to unravel their secrets. They hope that the mortals think their secrets are religious and ritual based, passed down or more likely recently discovered in some Fertile Crescent cave full of skulls and scrolls. But, of course, the mortals don't.

The real secret is that they are total poseurs that are more concerned about their looks than an aspiring model is. They cravenly hold to their clandestine stash of money and cards. Without the trust-fund, they would never play this role. Another of their secrets is that they actually loathe the rare, penniless true believers they encounter. There are intuitive ways to communicate to the perceptive contemporary that you are not actually poor. This too is important.

Like all seekers, on their journeys they are looking for evidence of God. The natural beauty is an inspiration. Sometimes they really do believe that they believe in what they do. Really. But that's an infrequent occurrence. It's almost an annoyance. It passes for a fleeting epiphany. Ultimately they are hoping to discover not some sacred burial ground or a spot where the shadow falls perfectly on the pinnacle of rock during solstice. They are dreaming of and searching for . . . the most inconvenient convenience store.

The Hole-in-the-Rock gas station in Utah or Roy's Cafe in California are a couple of excellent examples. Find them on a map. Go there. Then you will know just how inconvenient they are. You will more deeply understand the dedication and commitment these wanderers have. You only truly know how big a mountain is after you climb it. When these shrines to everything they
publicly scorn are discovered, and, if their fellow traveler is as shallow and trustworthy as they, in they go. Hypocritical heretics all.

Genuflecting in gratitude and exclaiming decidedly unreligiously, they run the gamut filling their hemp bags in half crazed ecstasy. Candy bars fall to the curling filthy red and formerly white linoleum tiles. The only witness to these blasphemous acts, acts that would assuredly get them excommunicated from their public image and cohorts, is the lone proprietor. This sole witness is at the cash register. A necessary evil, an unwitting accomplice that could care less and doesn't flinch at the sight of these vagabonds for junk food's extroverted frenzy. He's changing channels and smoking the same way he does whether someone is in the store or not.

He doesn't live here to make new friends. The great irony of living in the middle of nowhere is that ultimately you see it all. It doesn't faze the attendant when some tripping river guide walks in, buys a disposable razor and shaves a river in his hair right there at the counter. The completely bedazzled lost tourists in rental cars sporting branches of sage, dirt and tumbleweed in the grill and wheel-wells rolling slowly in on fumes or actually pushing the car up to the pump, out of gas for who knows how many scorched desert miles, bore him. Inevitably the electric convertible top was down when the car died. Their skin is as red as the Mustang with heat exhaustion mixing it up with sunburn, glowing like a sun of its own. Their skin does not resemble the tan of the sandstone cliff that someone decided would be the perfect spot for a store.

But this is no natural indentation. Some wind and water gouged arch in the making it is not. No, it was decided that this blank face was such an ideal spot that they dynamited their way into the base of the thousand foot palisade and built a store in the newly created cool and shaded concavity. The looks on the tourists' faces are the same as the devout who discover the likeness of the Madonna on the toast, in the chocolate, or in the water of the seeping tunnel wall. They fill their tanks. Gas and stomach. They always want more water and ice than there is to sell. They about clear the shelves as if Katrina's coming. They thought they were going to die. They saw vultures. The cashier's watching game shows. And after all this chaos, they want to pay with traveler's checks. The resident attendant has seen trucks drive by at night, on fire and not stopping. He has seen cars go by, driving only by the light of the full moon. The bikers that show up are usually bleeding and showing off drunken broken bones.

The cashier has had people want to trade their luggage for food and water and gas. It's cool, you've got to be a barterer out here. You should see the back room/home of this place. Talk about eclectic. Consequently, the sight of these tree-hugger, incense-haired, secret candy freaks that parade around as mystics couldn't be more normal. They grab the only sliver of shade, still over a hundred degrees, and fruit pie filling erupts from rents in their sugary crust as the faithful carelessly cram it all in. Snowballs, pink and white coconut sprinkles shedding, cue up for their mouths. The Twinkies, always the first casualty because they are so easy to eat in one bite, are gone before the ice even melts in their Cokes. And ice melts fast here. Like the river headed river guide, they carve a sinuous line of Ho Ho's and Hostess Cup Cakes. The wrappers grow into a cellophane cairn marking a superheated trail to nowhere.

Satiated with eternal, yet temporal satisfaction, they eventually depart. The self flagellations begin immediately. It hurts and they flinch dangerously behind the wheel. But they self importantly lash themselves mercilessly for each outlaw snack. The theater is back on, the curtain is up and if they die because they missed a Canyon Country turn while whipping themselves with hemp rope well, that's God's will. Of course, they never do miss that turn. They clean the van the way Boy Scouts are trained to clean campsites. With it thoroughly inspected and policed for wrappers and any other evidence, they are ready to rejoin their compatriots.

They are even 'clever' enough to drop a random piece of incense here and a little hemp fabric there. Maybe a brochure printed on recycled paper with soy ink will be crumpled and stuffed in a crack in the seat. And you know what kind of brochure it is. It's a protest planner, a tree planting, a covert demolition or a festival of civil disobedience. You know. Whatever. Zinging out of their minds on Coke and snacks like a real druggie on coke, they accost their brethren as they find some lost fringe festival. They insist that their enthusiasm is because of the weepingly beautiful country they had been driving through these last days.

But, lots of understanding, unacknowledged smirks and knowing nods sweep the listeners. They have all been at that inconvenient convenience store. Or, another even more inconvenient one. There is always one more inconvenient somewhere. The mystery is in the search.

You know.

Don't know where that story came from . . .

She couldn't not do it

2007-10-06T22:27:00.000-06:00

The girl in the gown was as happy as you get. Wedding days are supposed to be that way. Even the most normally shy person is the center of everything that day. She may or may not be normally shy but it didn't matter this day.

She glowed like the perfect glowing autumn day she got for her outdoor wedding. Her face was as exhilarating as the cold arcing crystalline waters dancing before her for her. And she knew. And they knew.

She couldn't not do it.

She was arguably the most alive she had ever been, in that fountain. The gown twirled her jovially and the glancing waters giggled. She kicked off her shoes.

It was just her and the fountain. She changed her dance with every new pulsation. It went on for but an instant. That's what photography is for.

It took a hard right and left

2007-10-06T22:09:00.000-06:00

"Or meet us at the Gemini. It beaches at six."

I rode the five mile commute at five. I got home quick to take a quicker shower. Borrowed the Beamer and sped back to the beach. I didn't know exactly where the Gemini landed but I'd seen other tourist Catamarans come up on the sands of Ka'anapali.

Actually found a place to park and threaded through buildings and obesity to the beach. There it was. Still on the water up by Black Rock. I made my way north all happy with myself for actually getting home, getting clean and getting back before the Gemini landed. Took several minutes to hustle up the beach to it. It was still a couple hundred yards out.

The torch bearer silhouetted himself nicely against the crepuscular daily backdrop. He theatrically lit torch to torch till he was at the highest and furthest point out. After lighting the last one, he thrust his tiki once each to the four directions and flamboyantly threw it in the sea. Kissing a lea and bowing, he also released this offering to the Kai (sea). He did what can be best described as a slow motion jumping-jack with no jumping and lots of body language forcing a transcendent mysticism on the performance.

I know for a fact that Hawaiians never twirled tiki sticks of fire. But they do now, at least during on-season. So, my jaded non-tourist self suspected farce in this show. But, who's to say and ultimately, who cares? It looked really cool and was a big crowd pleaser. After the half speed calisthenics, he gracefully did the arc of the diver and left nary a splash when he hit the sea as the sun fell down.

I looked back out to the Gemini and expected it to come ashore now. It started moving. It was aimed at the beach. It took a hard right and left. So, it was going to come ashore back where the other cats did. I walked rapidly along the beautiful slanted sands. Then I ran. The cat was getting away from me. It would easily disgorge all its passengers to quickly disperse in the rapidly gathering darkness before I could get there if I didn't run.

I ran. I made it. The first two people were coming down the steps as I arrived on the scene. With my camera out and on and sweating again, my phone rang. I was about to get a picture of them coming off the boat, a shot that they obviously could not get.

It was Kevin. "Hey there, we're at the room ready to go out. Where are 'ya?"

"I'm right in front of the Gemini waiting to take a picture of you two disembarking."

"Oh, yeah, sorry man, we actually went on the Terelani."

Sweat dropped the gap off my upper lip as my mouth broke open to laugh. We caught up a few minutes later. Kevin meeting me on the beach with two of his new favorite beers, Bikini Blonde from Maui Brewing Co. I told him about shooting home, getting clean, driving back, only to get sweaty again chasing a boat.

I don't recommend chasing catamarans, especially ones that your friends aren't even on.

Clever Cookies

2007-10-06T18:09:00.000-06:00

He was gruff enough. I'd seen him at The 'Goose. That tiny shit-hole-in-the-wall of a bar in the industrial park. Pretty much blue collar only. No tourists ever find it. That's why it's the 'Sly' Mongoose. I'd noticed him around town.

We were up and carrying heavy things around. We were cutting pallets apart with Skillsaws. That's what you do at Danny's house. My friend Danny. Best man at my wedding. Friends for going on thirty years. Travel partner in the old days. Bonded for life.

So we lugged plastic garbage cans full of two by fours cut into six inch studs. We were dragging the giant antique daybed that Christine bought in Bali through the half remodeled red-tagged house. It was an especially manly morning there on Front Street. The sun was just starting to do its morning lighting up Lanai like a halo thing. All was quiet . . . except at Danny's.

I was already sweating the way only a Hawaii morning can make you sweat when suddenly there he was again. He was walking right at us. His scarred lips told of busted teeth beyond. The mandatory tattoos did their old fading ripple across the muscles jig. He had the compact robust body of a guy that lifts a lot and has lifted more than you ever will. Maybe youth on a farm throwing bales and calves around. He walked straight up to me. We happily set the daybed down.

Speaking of lifting. Danny says that everything Christine bought in Bali is made out of 'Lead'wood. Not Deadwood, Redwood Lakewood or Headword as spell check suggested. After carrying the six Coconut tree posts out to the Point I would have to agree. All the limestone statuary and birdbaths weren't exactly light either. Of course, we had to put the daybed on the Point. We wrestled the Leadwood Coconut posts to another locale.

So, even in the stupid poop brown shorts and matching short sleeve collared button-down shirt, he still looked like trouble. He said in a loud and mildly sniggering voice, "Clever Cookies. We got Clever Cookies here for, Steve Williams?"

I had no idea. Thought it was another sympathy present for cutting my hand the other day. The day after that manly bleeding at ConstructionLand incident, a kid that looked like a local that would just as soon kick my Haole ass, showed up at the house with three . . . get well balloons! I was afriad he was going to break out in a sing-o-gram. Luckily Bridget hadn't thought of that too. I was already embarrassed enough for me and him.

Something about a honky-tonk lookin' probably bowling alley frequenting, tattooed tough guy in shorts saying Clever Cookies, is, in a word, disconcerting.

He left to lift all day. We went back to our daybed lifting. I'm sure to see him again at the 'Goose one of these nights.

And so it begins

2007-09-04T07:16:00.000-06:00

And so it begins.

The little clouded countergirl could hardly control her superiority well enough to actually address the white boy's inquiry. He hadn't given me my temporary password correctly and had the audacity to ask his co-worker for help. She was so full of herself and loathing that she was oblivious to her own bumbling. Arrogance and condescension typically anger me, but in classic Will Farrel fashion, hers was also fully injected with stupidity and ignorance, thus making me laugh. He turned away in barely concealed frustration at one point, regained his composure and tried to redirect her enthusiasm to the actual subject, namely, getting me my password. She was having too much fun berating him in front of me and off subject to notice that she should quiet down as she was in fact making a fool of herself.

Today we start work. I put rear brakes on the cruiser bike I will be using. Lots of surf boards lying around. It's okay having this cybercafe. But, I wish I had a laptop. If I did, I would also buy my own coffee maker and good coffee. As it is, good coffee and computer access will inspire me to early mornings. They open at six.

So far, I've slept out on the deck in the rattan bed/lounge. First light has been an excellent alarm clock. I haven't really cruised Lahaina yet. I am going to see if I can invent a Lahaina that I like better than the one I presently know. Phone book, newspapers will be my tools for seeing what else might be going on around here.

The T. to I. Florida to New York.

2007-08-20T12:09:00.000-06:00

They had to be real, if for no other reason than that nobody would bother to put fake ones there. But, they didn't move. Not at all. Not even their watery eyes blinked. The Troopers were real enough though. They didn't actually stop. They slowed. They admonished through cop speakers that it was illegal to hitch-hike on the Interstate. They also threatened arrest if they were still there when they returned. The threat lingered nicely in the stifled air and complimented the sight of the caged backseat and mounted shotgun gleaming like authorities best friend. The gators remained motionless in the ditchy swamp.

A beat up red convertible with South Carolina tags picked them up before the cops came back. They hopped in without using the doors and the driver said they were returning to South Carolina. But a couple hours later up around Jacksonville they were inexplicably dropped off at a gas station. Danny and Stevo watched them take the northbound I-95 on-ramp.

The monotony mounted. Two day to get from Daytona to Jacksonville and there they were. Still stuck in Florida. Might as well have been the same place as yesterday. It was of course, the same road, I-95 North. The pavement bubbled and stuck to their shoes. Reptiles still reclined in the reeds. The only palpable difference being that the cops actually stopped there.

They left the roadway, happy to do something different, even if it only meant walking down an on-ramp. A cracker-box, deep-porched shack was a convenience store. A couple of good ol' boys lounged, sipping beer, but otherwise motionless as alligators. It reminded them of the liquor store in Lake Charles by the highway that looked like a house, it was a house. And so was this place. "It makes for a short commute." suggested Dan. A couple of beers later, sinking in a swaybacked davenport and despair, Dan actually registered what he had been vacantly looking at in front of them, railroad tracks. They had been there an hour and no one had spoken. They even bought beers without words. It was close to eleven. After they broke the silence, the drunker good ol' boy responded, "Well hell yeah, there's a train station here. But it's too far to walk." With a deep satisfying swig, another beer was gone. It clinked in the old style wooden crate at his feet. He had finished one, discarded the bottle, gotten another, opened it, flicked the cap at a cat, missed, and savored the first frosty sip. Always the coldest. He accomplished all these things without moving anything more than his arms. "Thar is a bus though. Comes through eva day at four, stops right thar." He pointed with his almost empty bottle at a bench, roasted black and peeling, twenty feet away by the road. He took a last gulp, went through the whole get another beer thing again, missed the cat again and said, "Goes to the train station too."

At a quarter to four and three sheets to the wind Danny and Stevo said good bye to the one remaining boy. But he was out cold with bottle in hand. They went to the bench. To their surprise and delight a bus came rolling into sight at exactly four o clock. Sweet escape at last. They one-shouldered their packs and reached for their wallets. They had waited more than five hours for this moment. Really they had been trying to get to this moment for days, the moment when they knew for sure they were getting out of Florida. Take this bus to the train station, take a train to New York and be done with it. Then Steve told Dan to look quick. Dan looked in time to see the side of the bus. It took a right one block before reaching them and disappeared. Gone. Never to return. As Dan bent over laughing, Steve started swearing. And they both did this for several minutes.

Never take a fat mans word if he says it's too far to walk. The station was a mile and a half away. Even in their daze, disappointment and half drunkenness, they walked there with heavy packs in the heavy air in half an hour. Dan thought that was pretty funny too.

Of course the last train to New York had just left. The next one was several hours away. They had had enough sitting. They took a cab to the bars. They took another back to the station. Never tell a cabbie to take you to the train station so you can take a train to New York and never see him again and then ask him if he can get you any drugs. He can. He did. He said they were Quaaludes. They believed him and bought them. Maybe they were. They had never taken Quaaludes so how would they know. They were not druggies. They smoked when they skied. That's it.

Settled comfortably in the parlour car, they swallowed the pills with beer. A short time later they were chatting animatedly with a couple of cute city girls that were going to D.C. Steve was telling their story when his neck muscles and wrist muscles suddenly and simultaneously forgot how to work. Dan took his beer and replaced it with a cup of coffee. It didn't matter. He woke up hours later in his seat in a different car just in time to rubber-leg it to the bathroom. He mostly made it. He was in the bathroom. The door was closed. But those sleeping neck muscles made for lousy aim. With the contents of his stomach elsewhere he felt instantly better. He was even in a good mood mopping the bathroom floor with t.p.

They got off at Grand Central and decided to visit Bruce in New London before they flew to old London. They returned from Connecticut and Steve went to visit his parents up in Hilton. Dan went to Greenwich Village and made a new friend. They split up at Grand Central Station. They would meet up again in a few days. That sounded easy enough.

The T. to I. Miami/Naussau/Miami

2007-08-19T10:27:00.000-06:00

"You boys lookin' ta' crew?" He was an odd looking sort with a Captain Kangaroo flair. The moustache was pure silver pomposity. Matching eyebrows danced independently and the mouth seemed to be trying to flee his face. It squirted left and right back and forth to its edges, unable to decide what to do next. But the eyeballs were piercing little tight blue rivets same color as the Carib aimed straight at the boys. They were young and dumb and dumbfounded. "Sorry, I say, are you boys looking to crew?" This question went searching for the first one through the heat waves above the gas rainbowed water. "Well no, we're just looking at boats." With this, the captain shrugged and walked away. The boys fought their way through their incomprehension enough to say, "What did he say?" They quickly decided it was worth finding out what the man was up to. A really big marina for small boats is nothing more than a unintended maze. It constitutes one hell of a place to try to find someone. Each catwalklike dock 45 degrees off behind bulkheads and zigzags away forever. But every one of these wooden forevers dead ends. It's like a contiguous looking plateau that suddenly yawns it's hidden canyon walls, dropping thousands of feet at a never imagined uncrossable void. The only recourse being a long circuitous backtrack around. Uncountable masts of varying height and color served to distract their search like a windy Bamboo forest. Ultimately he was easy enough to spot once they were on the right dock. Chief among his other oddities, he was inexplicably wearing long pants in the middle of the day in Miami in May. He saw them coming and smiled broadly under his silver broomy fan. "Either you boys ever sailed before?" He shot this question at them like a weapon. "No, never." said the smaller boy. "I did a month on a shrimper in the gulf." said Dan. Neither of the boys thought of asking the captain if he knew how to sail. It didn't cross their minds, yet. "Sailin' for Nassau tonight, I need a crew of two. Meet me here at ten." They did.

Thus decided, the boys made their way onto a city bus for the heart of the bureaucratic badlands of downtown. After an interminable government office waiting room wait, they fled triumphant to South Beach, Danny's brand new overnight passport in hand. Getting that passport being the only reason they were in Florida at all. They were on their way to Ireland . . . from Colorado. Luckily, the sun finally set behind the Art Deco hotels and bars. Between the tropical heat, the endless beers, the clandestine puffs and the topless girls on the beach, they could quite easily have forgotten that they were sailing to the Bahamas tonight. With little more than time and money, they boarded Captain Tom's boat at ten p.m. In between shifts at the helm, Danny and Steve-O didn't even have to suffer the indignity of sharing the bow. It was a catamaran. No, they sat across from each other at the apex of their own private bow waving. "I'm Jimmy Buffett." "No, I'm Jimmy Buffett." And they both were. Florida receded and tomorrow approached. It was an overnight voyage to Bimini. Flying fish flashed in the phosphorescence and they steered by the stars. Steve was amazed that people could actually do that.

"You boys sit tight. I'll land 'er." They sidled up to a tiny rocking dock. Suddenly Captain Tom figured out how to smash his boat right into it. The noise was deafening. Unperturbed, Captain Tom tied off to the still quivering structure. He suggested the boys go explore the island. They happily abliged. He jauntily opened a can of boat Bondo and prepared to fix the damage as if this was normal. Black faces as black as the sand was white stared out from what looked like, and they hoped was, a bar. It was. It was dark and cool and plain inside. It felt safe, and served beer. This place was the most interesting authentic thing Steve had ever seen. It was so real it should have been fake. A few days earlier they had tripped around Disney World. Who's to say what's really real? Danny had had the misfortune of actually working there one desperate summer before he escaped Orlando. They did the behind the scenes, no public access, employees only tour. They ate no cotton candy. They didn't shake Mickey's hand. Considering the little pieces of paper they had eaten, it was a good thing they stayed off the rides. The bar could well have been a feature in some 'Caribbean World' exhibit, sand floor, ratty three bladed rattan fan, walls lashed together from local pulp, complete with actors, ragged and dread locked, playing their parts like a ethnic Williamsburg. They refreshed with Red Stripe and ate Conch. They joined the others at the window and watched the captain Bondo his cracks. Watching since the crash shattered their torpor, they had seen Dan and Steve hastily disembark. They welcomed them openly to the bar. The incident served as an ice breaker. By the way they had hurried away, the locals correctly deduced that they were mere hitch-hikers and blamed them not for the damage done to their only dock.

Next a.m., Captain Tom fractured the quiet again. The motor flared loud because he started it instead of unfurling sails. They had motored the entire first leg. If fact, Dan and Steve were destined never to see the sails unfurled. They began to pull away. The skeletal dock revealed its damage but Captain Tom never saw it. He was too busy not seeing the slow fish-tailing motion he was putting his boat into. Apparently he never saw the other boat either. "We're gonna hit that boat." Dan and Steve nodded in unbelieving agreement. Shaking their heads no, but thinking, yes we are, they hit it. The ladder on the stern ripped partially away. It hung useless above the water in the once again interrupted quiet. The man in his undies, rightly screaming obscenities, stood shaking his fists. He became smaller and quieter as Tom serenely motored away. Dan and Steve looked at the man and each other. They looked at Tom but Tom never looked. They hadn't even had enough time to yell apologies and that they were just hitch-hikers before it was over and they were out of there. There was one dock and one boat. Captain Tom had managed to hit everything. There was nothing to be done but roll two big ones and return to their private bows and wonder if they really were Jimmy Buffett. They weren't. But, Captain Tom was no longer Captain Tom either. He wasn't even Captain Kangaroo. His new moniker struck them both so hard, they could have gone overboard. For the rest of the trip, to his face, because there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it because it was so indisputably true, he was from from the last crash forward forever referred to by his finally reveiled secret super hero identity . . . Captain Crunch.

Away they motored off the shelf into deeper blue. The sails remained securely lashed to the mast. The seas remained calm. Captain Crunch had built this boat himself. The table in the cabin below deck was centered squarely between the hulls. Apparently he had opted for a flat bottom design between the hulls under the table. For though there were virtually no waves (or wind), nothing, and I mean nothing, would stay on the table. The table shuddered violently with every little love tapped wave. The racket was a dull but constant durge to bad design. It was like a skipping c.d. at half volume on a boom box from hell. Steve slept on deck, suffering spray and salt and sunburn.

It had become obvious that Captain Crunch didn't much care for Dan. Steve steered his three hour shift. Dan sailed his three and turned it over to the captain. Captain Crunch went off crazy, looking so much like his namesake on the cereal box that Dan and Steve almost went overboard again, for laughing this time. He hopped around like some twisted morph of the captains, Tom, Crunch and Kangaroo. Words spurted out through spittle like the flying fish in the spray. Something about Danny steering us off course slowly coalesced out of the fragmented sentences. He swung the wheel as if to suggest that if he hadn't done it at that very moment with all the gusto his skinny arms with the shrivelled 'Anchors Away' tattoo could muster, they would have all died instantly. He rolled open charts. Dan and Steve went back to their bows. Steve had given Dan his heading. They had been sailing off course for six hours not three. They were definitely not Jimmy Buffett and they wondered where the Bermuda Triangle might be. There was no telling Captain Crunch so they enjoyed their situation and casually scanned the horizon. Maybe it was the all too often ignorant luck that men like these sometimes have or his time in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but to their everlasting amazement and gratitude, Captain Crunch had done it. Though it took many extra hours, there it was, land ho! A faint little scrape of land punctured the horizon. It deflated their lost-at-sea epic. It became a mere bumbling adventure again. Captain Crunches high fives seemed a bit hysterical and overly exuberant. They left Dan and Steve with the distinctly disconcerting impression that Captain Crunch might not have known if they were ever going to see land again either. No matter, it was Nassau. Even a mile or so out, they could tell that much. Dan and Steve returned to their bows and were Jimmy Buffett again. Captain Crunch remained Captain Crunch. The world slowed down. It got quiet. At first, it seemed a manifestation of their shared sense of relief, but this was no emotional hallucination. The world had slowed down. It was quiet. The motor had quit. They were dead in the water. You need wind to sail. You need gas to motor sail. There was no wind. While steering off course for who knows how long in what kind of crazy detour they had, of course, been using gas. They had been on this thirty footer for fourteen hours. They should have landed long ago. They were dead in the water. God damn it, they were not Jimmy Buffett.

An hour and a half later, Steve was excitedly leaning over the heaving bow retrieving a Jerri can from the coast guard. With not an inkling of boarding them and searching, the coast guard rapidly departed with the empty can. They were obviously not smugglers. Moving again, they motored toward the hectic harbor. This was no Bimini. Seaplanes and windsurfers, ships and sloops, pleasure craft pulling skiers, jet skis and Sunfish, ocean liners and freighters and cruise ships and, Jesus Christ, even snorkelers all frolicked between them and safe passage. It would take weeks to crash into everything there.

A man with a bull horn barked them their slip number. Slip number? After Bimini, that was a very scary concept indeed. Captain Crunch didn't say anything about "You boys just sit tight . . . " He didn't have to, they were. They saw their designated sliver of water ahead in this very busy, mostly full, floating parking lot. On the port side stood a high solid concrete dock. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. To starboard was an equally solid looking gleaming white yacht. Go ahead, hit it, you'll just sink your boat. It was so high out of the water that it wasn't until later they noticed all the formally dressed people mingling up there, cocktails in hand. This time, it was an emotional hallucination as the world slowed down and got quiet. It stood perfectly still. You could have heard ice cubes tinkling in martini glasses up on that far distant deck. The little Cat inched for its slip. Nothing was falling off the table down below. Time left and, it was done. The Captain of Crunch hit nothing, except his palm to his forehead with barely concealed relief. He couldn't get off the boat fast enough. "The key's right there, stay as long as you like." That said, he strode off the dock carrying a folding lawn chair some unmarked box Danny and Steve O hadn't seen before. The captain joined the throngs and was gone. They never saw him again. They stayed on his boat a few nights. They ate at the free buffets at the casinos and tried to empty the bag. They couldn't do it. They abandoned it and its accoutrements under a plunger in the restroom at the airport. They sea-planed it to Miami. They Amtraked to Orlando. They tried to hitch to New York from Daytona. Two days later having only made Jacksonville, they Amtraked it to the Big Apple and flew to London. They never did decide if they were Jimmy Buffet. They wondered about that unmarked box. Had they been smugglers? In one of his songs, Buffett said he had been.

Not Normal NORBA Nationals, the Downhill.

2007-08-17T22:05:00.000-06:00

And then there is the Downhill. The 4 crossers might get hurt more but the downhillers are not right. Although often they are one in the same. Cross countriers typically only do cross country, maybe some do the short track. Short track being a grueling dirt criterium a half hour long. You get points for your position each time around the track. When the half hour is up there are four more laps. Basically it's an half hour sprint followed by four laps going even harder. Lots of lovely puking and threatening exhaustion at the finish. But the downhillers and 4 crossers do the crash and burn and break bones events. I've decided the difference is that cross countriers are into pain where as downhillers are into injuries.

Lonely Planet

2007-08-17T12:56:00.000-06:00

He waved somewhat maniacally with the frustration that only incessant insects can bring. The flies were not deterred or dissuaded. They dive bombed the plate like seagulls around a fishing boat. It was hunger and no other choices that had brought him in here at all. It didn't look like much of a restaurant and, by that point of the trip, he had become a pretty good judge. The food was an exercise in necessity. He was far enough south to have dropped off the Altiplano, but not yet far enough to benefit from the European influences of northern Argentina. Having partially shrugged off the Gringo Trail, he was at once happy and uncomfortable. Hardened salt flats that you couldn't really get to and diminishing elevations, populations and prices were the attraction. Basking in the latter two, he none the less coveted the higher climes he had left behind. Cold at night equals no bugs. He could only imagine the battalions of backward kneed flamingos said to inhabit the relentless salt flats in numbers that complemented its eternal expanses. He had not enough time to try to get that far. The flies tried to die a gluttonous death and put his world weary self image and patience to the test.

He flash backed to a time a thousand years before when he had angrily reclaimed his tattered seat on a three day, third class trip across the Chihuahua Desert. It was the second day of the first time he had ever been in the third world. He didn't speak Spanish. He never once got off the train for fear of it leaving without him. The day before he had barely managed to buy a few tamales and liquados through a broken window as the train pulled away. He was half starved and fully dehydrated. It was six a.m. and he was sleep deprived. The old wrinkled Mestiza he woke up was stooped and four and a half feet tall. She was laden with all manner of third world essentials including chickens and a child. To his eternal wannabe world traveler shame, he insisted she vacate his seat. She, sad-eyed and exhausted, moved off and stood. He, hard-hearted and exhausted, sat down and slumped. Up a moment later, he couldn't do it. She refused his offer. It went vacant but a short time. He and the old woman stood at opposing ends of the car, all the rattling way to Mexico City. She shunned his every attempt at apology, preferring instead to let him sink in self loathing. And sink he did. He sunk as deep as that train sunk into Mexico.

He slapped himself in the head ostensibly chasing a fly but effectively bringing himself back from Mexico to Bolivia. He was as likely to make contact with a fly as you are of touching a single student in a school of fish. No, his frantic waving only managed to garner the unwanted attention of three men across the room at the single other occupied table. They had sauntered in, tightly whispering, a few minutes after he had sat down. They glanced his way, then away. He instinctively averted his eyes. Out in the wide world, it's best to leave some encounters unencountered. Avoidance, though never desirable, is occasionally the correct tactic. He'd already ordered and in fact the hostess/waitress/cook/dishwasher/cashier/owner was serving him as they entered. She didn't make eye contact with them either. They used the pretence of misunderstanding the waving as an invite. One of them approached. The man wasn't obviously menacing, he didn't lean hard on the wooden table and stare. Though neither did he smile. The man barked out, slightly aggressively one word . . . 'passport.' Looking up from his fly spotted meal, he replied, 'What for?' 'Passport, por favor.' He stood up as if maybe to get his passport out of a pocket but stopped short. Acting as brave as he thought he could, he looked eye level at this low key demanding man and asked in Spanish, 'Who are you?' The other two men began to rise but he sat them back down with a palm of his hand. The man announced that he was the police and wanted the passport. The Lonely Planet lay open on the table. He had read what he could before arriving. He was finishing the section on Sucre when the men had entered. This city was known for the earlier mentioned things but there was also a passport scam that for some reason was more prevalent here than other places. Even the most ignorant traveler knows not to let go of your passport easily. The events unfolding at the table were textbook passport scam, if you were consider Lonely Planet a textbook. The man and the other men were not wearing uniforms or any identifying markings. The book mentioned that some times it is the police pulling this scam. The man became a bit more menacing with the ticking clock in the music less room. With much better Spanish than he had had in Mexico he said, 'If you are the police, identification please.' He wasn't fluent and never would be. He knew though that he had said 'identification please' correctly. The man's friends did join him then. The proprietress intervened and scolded these big men back to their table. Flies no longer a nuisance, he finished his meal, paid, tipped large and thanked the woman profusely. She modestly accepted this gratitude as the three men rapidly got up and exited before he could. They managed with her broken English and his busted up Spanish to communicate. They indeed were the police. But, no matter, he had done the right thing. It's not such a big thing from police to prisoner here, she smiled. Stepping out into the street, the men were gone. Feeling like a savvy world citizen again, he brazenly spent a few more days in Sucre. He avoided the police station. He always had a good reason to go the other way. His curiosity as to why a crowd might be gathering up ahead was easily quelled by his desire not to see the men again. And he almost didn't.

The bus started moving, customarily behind schedule, but came to a stop a couple blocks later. He looked out the window and there they were. His world traveler self image took a dive like the flies at his food. This time they were wearing uniforms, thus eliminating any lingering doubt that the woman at the restaurant might have been lying. He lowered himself halfway down the seat, halfway down the aisle, hidden behind his book and thankful for his window seat. He had a brand new appreciation for the gruff character who only moments before had unceremoniously flopped down in the seat next to him. The men were wearing shades and hats and clubs and guns. The man, the man that came over to the table first, flanked his men around the bus with a gun-toting gesture. They might as well have been banditos brandishing rifles with cartridge belts crisscrossing their chests. The man, the very man, the same man, the boss man, boarded the bus and walked halfway down the aisle. Completely menacingly now, the man spotted who he was looking for and violently escorted him off. The door closed and the bus lurched away, chasing other peoples dust. It spun off down the street, taking its noise with it. Smoke and dirt merged and swirled. It made its very own grey paisley eddies.

He stood at the back window. His stomach churned as the air churned. The spinning gritty air quickly obscuring the image of the man and the men doing whatever it was they were doing to their detainee. He shut his eyes because it wasn't obscuring fast enough. He sighed relief. He returned to his seat and his Lonely Planet guide. The seat next to him was empty as an unanswered question. It went vacant but a short time.

NORBA Nationals

2007-08-16T21:37:00.000-06:00

The NORBA Nationals came to Snowmass last week. This is '4-cross', four racers at a time on a bermed, bumped out, table topped track. More trauma happens here than any other event. But the downhill is scarier, because I'm the guy that gets to run over when they crash and make sure they are alive. So far they always have been.

The bad thing about this digital.

2007-07-29T20:54:00.000-06:00

Maybe if I tilt the camera. Almost! There we go.

The bad thing about this digital. The built in delay. It's not exactly an action sports camera.

Ya' can't see much of him. But you see all you need to know he didn't stick it.

Oh, there he goes. I bet the cameraman under the ramp got some good footage.

Waterproof digital

2007-07-29T20:44:00.000-06:00

This is the good thing about a waterproof digital. Bridget sent me this camera for an anniversary present last year. I finally trusted it to actually go underwater. Robin and I were paddle surfing around kehei and saw this beautiful turtle. I slipped into the water off the board and got three shots.

Poodle with a mohawk?

2007-07-29T20:39:00.000-06:00

Poodle with a mohawk? No. Cairn Terrier terror.

It's always almost winter here.

2007-07-29T08:23:00.000-06:00

It's always almost winter here. And that's not the only great reason to live here. Yeah, I loved Montana too. but now ten years after I returned to (Aspen) Colorado I know I made the right choice. Bozeman is just way too on the 'cool places to move to' radar. Bridger Bowl is small ,steep, beautiful and crowded. The daily pageant at the base of the hike to the ridge is a farce. Cool people stand lingering, slowly racking skis on next years pack. Ostensibly looking for friends, actually standing around as a man stands around his brand new sports-car checking the Rolex, having a smoke, polishing the polish, acting all casual and hoping for the cell phone to chime. The ridge hippies are about as nonchalant and natural as a click of 8th grade girls smoking cigerettes. I skied Bridger for 8 years. I never put my skis on my pack for the big, what is it, 500 ft. maximum altitude gain? i put 'em over my shoulder, spending as little time as possible with the posers. Top o' the Ridge is at 8000 ft. Aspen is at 8000 ft. My house is at 8000 ft. If yall want a hike that you might want to rack your skis for, meet me at the Highlands. We'll hike the bowl. I'm not a hack skier either that's all jelous 'cause the ridge hippies are better skiers than me. They're not. I've been skiing all my life. I've been a snowcat powder tour guide, an instructor, a guide for handicapped skiers and am currently a pro patroller. Oh, don't get me started about the 'nationals'. The city of Bozeman is expanding faster than the belt of the man that wins the free dinner by eating the 45 oz. meat in a half hour. Must close abruptly. Bye-for now.

Badder 'n a Crown Vic.

2007-07-27T22:22:00.000-06:00

I never saw a Hummer police car before. There was traffic all around and I had to speed up a bit to get to this location. I pointed and shot. Hummer is actually changing lanes in the photo. That's why it's such an adrenalin action shot! Hummer took the next exit and was gone gone gone. The city, town, village, burg, municipality of Lone Tree Colorado is the one represented here. "Excuse me ossifer, is that a hybrid?" We used to have Saabs in Aspen for about twenty five years. Recently we switched to Volvos. A bit more classy and understated. The Hummer is kinda in your face, don't you think? More so even than the classic bad ass police Mopars and Ford Crown Vics'. Never did see the driver. Probably some little pipsqueek, short-guy-complex, weight lifting, barely passed the academy, family man.

Bad Idea Jeans.

2007-07-27T18:40:00.000-06:00

I remember a fake commercial from Saturday Night Live many years ago. It was selling 'Bad Idea Jeans'. One guy was saying (I can't remember the actor) something like " You know, I think I'll tell my wife about that affair I had with the babysitter. Heck, it's been over for almost six months! Bad Idea Jeans." And some other great funny examples of bad ideas. My beautiful step-daughter Rachel is fifteen. I've been a stepdad for five years. We were aimlessly driving around the Front Range the other day while Bridget was getting Lasik surgery. We drove to Castle Rock. Yuck, too new and burbed and barbed and gated and chained out for me. Took a left east and drove for Franktown. I was just looking for Main street. As we approached, a sign welcomed us to historic Franktown. That's what I'm looking for. Historic. I didn't see any. The burbsprawl juggernaught had chewed Frank up and puked 'em out. There was a tractor dealership though. I caved. Seems that thirty miles south just isn't enough miles anymore. Much more south and we'd be pile driving into that bastion of neocon, fundamentalist, republican, right-wing extremism, Colorado Springs. Best just give it up and drive back toward the megalopolis and get something to eat at oh, maybe a Chili's or an Applebee's. Mmmmmmm. We didn't eat. I'd rather fast than slow-fast-food. So we take the big new four laner north. We are not on the interstate, but in this case, same diff. As we approached Parker, there it is. A sign. It says Main Street. Sweet! Before we even parked, Parker proved to be a bit too brand new. "Main street," well, it wasn't the one I was looking for. Sure, there's a little gingerbread on the porchs. Yeah, the sidewalks are sort of like boardwalks. There are some genuine fake saloon doors and everything. 'Course they didn't lead you into a 'saloon'. They led you into a salon. What a difference an O can make. It was friggin' hot. The frillydilly sign said Coffee & Books. We entered. Looking for books, not coffee. Rows of pulp paperback trash insulted us mercilessly. The people sitting and sipping fit the faux. We had seen a sign for a pet store. In a quickly thought saving-grace move, I asked the barristra where it was. I acted like that's why we had entered. She pondered all friendly like. Thumb on chin looking up at the fan. It turned slow lazy and did nothing to the air. Returning to earth with a gentle back and forth nod suggesting no, she indeed said, "No, I don't know of one anywhere around here. But you should ask Linda next door at Panache. She's been here for two years. She would know." We departed. We didn't ask Linda. We found the pet store. This is the maybe not a very good Step-Dad, Bad Idea Jeans part. I'm also a complete animal lover. In a different situation, we would have all kinds of critters, as my Mom (Mammacat) does. The place was filled with the cutest god-damned puppies ever. "Duh, no shit Steve." And we zero'd in on the one above. I told Rachel all the parent things about how to please realize that most likely we wouldn't be getting another dog right now. I told her all the reasons as I fell in love, right along with her with this little heart-breaker, big-eared Yorkshire Terrier. Rachel thought of a name for him. The perfect name I admit. 'Link' from Hairspray which we had just seen the night before. We never ate. We stayed there 'cause it was only going to be harder to leave the longer we stayed. We stayed. We went back the next day with Bridget. Bad Idea Jeans. I took pictures of him, Link, even with Rachel. Extra large Bad Idea Jeans. We didn't eat that day either. We got dang close though, up in Idaho Springs at BeauJo's Pizza. We were even seated. but, Rachel insisted on insisting. She couldn't cheer up. Poor kid. I gave cool Step-Dad suggestions. I finally told her she could leave or we could leave. No, she says. So I respond maturely and drop a fiver on the table to cover our drinks and walk out, kinda making a scene and I could give a shit. Damn, I could have used saloon doors then! Anyway a big ol' cry, yell, scold, hug, laugh, talk, listen session ensues. The main thing it accomplished was that we wasted a bunch of time and now we had to leave. Hungry. Ironically, we had to get to the kennel in time to get Ellie, our sweet baby thing Cairn Terrier that Rachel also named. She's four. She weighs twelve pounds. We won't be going to any more pet stores any time soon. Really kinda stupid of me. And we all, but mostly Rachel, went through heart wrenching trouble for it. So there's the next theme for Bad Idea Jeans. "Hey, I think I'll take my fifteen year old step daughter to the cutest puppies in the world pet store for two hours. But, we're not getting one." Bad Idea Jeans.

A small sampling of my art

2007-07-24T06:55:00.000-06:00

The top two images are examples of my commercial work. I am a political cartoonist as well. Below we have a t-shirt design I did. Two fine art examples follow. The four final images are from two of the three children's books I illustrated. I shall post more examples once I get them scanned.

Slippers in Alaska

2007-07-22T15:15:00.000-06:00

Barbara 'Sue' titled this image "Steve talking, girls don't care." Yeah, but just look at those bearded boys raptly paying attention as I told my tale! Thing is, I'm still talking and what a story it is. This shot is in Alaska the summer of '81. Holy crap, I guess that makes us friends for life. We were hanging out at an obscure abandoned mining site near Fairbanks. There was an old dredge, a crane, a sifter and other giant things. These relics were an a grand scale. Things are big in Alaska. The next pic shows us on top of the crane. It was really huge, the tallest crane I have ever seen before or since. And I've seen some big ones. I picked up clients at the airport in Las Vegas in the mid nineties during the crazy building boom that expanded the town over towards the airport. I counted eleven cranes from one vantage point, all big, all busy swinging around like hyper tether balls. None were as big as the rust frozen one in AK. Not only is the abandoned stuff big in Alaska but there is plenty of it and it is of a certain vintage and/or genre. I ended up living on Cranberry Lane out past Airport Way in a , well, I always call it a cabin but old photos verify that it in fact was a cabin only in the sense that it had no electricity or plumbing. In all other respects, it can honestly only be called a shack. But the word shack brings up semi romantic images as well, you know, like, chicken shack or something, admittedly not nearly as many as the word cabin. But, truth be told, my place was not a cabin nor a shack but a lowly shed. Shed does not sound romantic or rustic. It was on the Chena River and the government issue mosquito repellent that Barbara Sue gave me worked well. It also melted plastic. Of the giant eccentric structures on the property, I most remember the big barge crashed on river right. Apparently it couldn't negotiate the curved waterway or maybe it was intentionally scuttled. Trees were growing out of it and silt was gathering in an eddy at its bow. The size of the property was actually increasing. There was also an old fuselage laying out in the woods. I love Alaska for this and other reasons. I've still never been back. It's a long expensive ways away unless you hitch-hike like I did. Aspen to Santa Barbara to Fairbanks with a guitar I didn't know how to play. Four thousand miles in three weeks. But therein lies the tale I might have been telling as we stood young and adventurous together in Alaska for an epic split second of all our lives.

Thanks Rachel!

2007-07-19T21:38:00.000-06:00

A piece of a painting that took a couple tries. The first try had a much more primitive cartoonish house, no people and a comic red truck where the dancers now dance. I had all this sky and I didn't know what to put in it but it needed something compositionally. My first leanings are usually architectural, houses, buildings, bridges, cars etc. Rachel (my fifteen year old) suggested dancers. I am grateful for the idea and I wouldn't have thought if it on my own. I plan on using this idea more. Thanks Rachel!

Other people's dreams

2007-07-12T00:03:00.000-06:00

This whole Kinsaw thing has been on the surreal side. Just how I like it. I haven't talked much yet about my friend Max. He's a good guy and he named his son Zen. My lot at this time seems to experience many types of lives. I realized that to some extent I'm visiting other people's dreams. It's a lot of hard work to turn a dream into a reality. I've got dreams yet too. It's educational to see the commitment and effort put forth by others and watch the dream be realized. My dreams consist of literary success and artistic success. I've attained most of my other dreams so far. Maybe some weren't so lofty or important in the grand scheme of things. But we all come from different backgrounds and circumstances. To be a river guide, to lead mountain bike trips, to travel, to love, to learn, to be a powder skiing guide, an instructor, a ski patroller, these and others have been attained. To illustrate childrens books is another. So now specifically they are paint, photograph and write. Among others. Good night. Peace, pedal, paddle or oar, Steve.

To and fro

2007-07-12T00:00:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow I'll relate how I got to Kinsaw and how I got home.

2007-07-11T23:54:00.000-06:00

Kansas, er I mean, Kinsaw doesn't have to be flat.

Locally quarried limestone church.

Here comes the sun.

2007-07-11T23:39:00.000-06:00

Eventually the sun returned to nourish the state flower. I got one more good day on the Versatile. I dragged around an implement called an undercutter this time. Just like anywhere, the sun transforms the landscape. An old garage and a plow attachment take on a new light and colors stand out anew. The fertile plains burst with new crops. We got the wheat harvested. That's the most important thing.

''DON'T LOSE YOUR RIDING PRIVILEGE!''

2007-07-11T23:29:00.000-06:00

I think this would make a cool tee shirt. The Superior Coach emblem on front left and the rules on the back. But it's late and I'm really doing this one last post for the day to ask, how come if Arkansas is pronounced Arkinsaw, why is Kansas called Kansas? I'm going to call it Kinsaw for a while and see how that goes. I mean what's the matter with Kinsaw anyway?

Dumber 'n a box of rocks?

2007-07-11T19:54:00.000-06:00

Certainly farmers are considered by some as not the most fertile 40 acres on the spread. Their world being the land of well, land. Their concerns are grounded literally. Dirt, water, plants, animals, poop, machinery, and especially weather are the tenets of the culture. Soft spoken, simple spoken, understated, fair, friendly, honest, loyal, hard working,dedicated and not easily driven to distraction can be considered some of the basic attributes of farmers. Of neccesity, they live in the country, often far from even the most rudimentary society and culture of some small half boarded up town. Their easy exterior and genuine two and three fingered wave from the steering wheel with the simultaneous subtle nod and slight smile could sure lead an outsider to think, 'My how trusting, what fools, how easy would it be to scam these folks'. And to be sure farmers have been scammed and led astray many times and in one case by none other than the kings of unfairness and underhanded, self-serving lowlifes, yes, the federal government. Just like how they had to make Hummers attractive to the U.S. public so they could get rid of the surpluses, also included in this list could be Jeeps from WWII thus inventing the 4 wheel drive craze that continues unabated to this day. Those little Willys are innocuous enough and it's only fair to mention that this is the same reason we have rafting the way we do, surplus rubber rafts from the greatest generation. I consider that a good thing. Post WWII saw farming transform on a national scale from natural handed down methods to hugely strictly chemically based. Thanks to yours truly, the U.S. government. Yields skyrocketed and one man could farm what would have taken a large family of boys only ten years earlier. Chemicals were introduced to the trusting and usually struggling farmers and poured into the industry cheaply and promoted maybe less than totally truthfully. Where do those chemicals go after they have been spread on the ground? After that rainstorm the other day, we were driving and saw something white ahead. It looked like snow. As we approached, we saw that it was a large jiggling blob of suds. You would have to call them suds. Like soapsuds. This one little culvert looked like an I Love Lucy overflowing washing machine skit. Chemicals. Lots of cancer hereabouts. I met two people fighting cancer in my two weeks there. Now that I think of it, I only met three people during my stay. Okay, I'm jumpin' from this soapbox and getting back to my main subject. Let's see if I can quit reveling in my grasp of language and simply make my long beleaguered point. That sentence is an ominous harbinger of this juggernaught I am being seduced by. Okay, geez. Not all farmers are dumb. The above mentioned attributes are highly commendable. My short experience taught me that ranch ingenuity is alive and well among farmers. Keeping herds of animals alive or acres apon acres of grain or corn or whatever? And some of the urbanites that streak by pushing the limits of their Subaru Tribeca couldn't keep a fish alive. Anyway, not my most coherent post but hey, lots of misspelled words (all since corrected)! This all came from the photo of the box of rocks.

Landscape photography in Kansas.

2007-07-11T19:46:00.000-06:00

The challenge of landscape photography in Kansas is obvious enough. Don't put too much sky in it unless there is something in IT like amazing clouds, emotional color or maybe a tornado or two.

2007-07-11T17:18:00.000-06:00

An implement called a 'drill'. It plants seeds.

Max's land and combine. A '95'.

Dale's land and combine. a 'Gleaner' not a '95'.

2007-07-11T17:11:00.000-06:00

Brooding sky.

Wet color.

And these.

2007-07-11T17:05:00.000-06:00

Discer and tree,

Paint emulates clouds.

The shed door and the floor.

Like these.

2007-07-11T16:57:00.000-06:00

Up, up and away.

Satellite image or macro?

Fast forward, skier from right to left.

Now do you want to be a farmer?

2007-07-11T16:38:00.000-06:00

After we lost two days and almost one tractor in the new pond, I finally went discing again. I was planning on a good long session of at least eight hours. Three hours later it started raining. Half an hour later the road was barely passable . . . on foot. Max got the little front wheel drive Geo Prism stuck in the road and left it there. I got the Versatile in the shed. We worked on the combine, trying to fix the auger and other manly things to say over the next couple days. It took three more days for the ground to get almost dry enough to go back out. I didn't build any shingle Totos but I did shoot a bunch of photos that can only be described as 'creative'. Not this one particularily, I just stuck the waterproof digital outside and snapped. How do you like farming so far?

I don't know but it's a Cairn Terrier.

2007-07-11T16:11:00.000-06:00

Couldn't tell 'ya so don't bother asking. I know it's a Cairn Terrier and looks a bit like mine. Maybe this is what happens when the fields flood and you can't work. Eastern Kansas is severely flooded right now. I wonder who might be creating what. Duh, actually figured it out as I'm writing, kinda' slow sometimes . . . It's Toto. Might be a family of Terrier lovers spent days in the barn watching the rain and wondering when it would stop. Twisters might have been spinning down like God's 5 thousand year old wrath. Could be there were pallets of old shingles leaning in a corner and this is what happened. Must have been a lot of rain. Directly across from this sculpture stands Sonny's Tavern. We were big spenders and hungry. I had both of the most expensive meals on the menu. One old gal gave me a sidelong glance and exhaled smoke fiercely when the steak sandwich came out. I had that and a double cheeseburger. It was $3.50 while the steak sandwich was $3.75. Max did the same and we split a $4.00 pitcher of Bud that was the Monday special. Usually it was $5.oo. We still might have left more than is customary but we didn't overtip much. Don't want to make them think we're gay or trying to impress them. We left five on twenty . . . they probably think we're gay.

I'm more of a Versatile man myself.

2007-07-11T15:38:00.000-06:00

John Deere used to be the shit. Everybody knows that the John Deere 95 combine would last forever and the only reason they changed them was because they did. John Deere learned about planned obsolescence. Used to be a man could climb aboard with some big 'ol man sized wrenches and fix a John Deere. John Deere fixed that. Max still owns and runs a '95', but when it comes to a tractor . . . well, he says, I'm more of a Versatile man myself. Versatile 800 that is. Canadian made with a straight 8 deisel.

My first day driving this thing was my second day there. I was 'discing'. I pulled an implement called a 'discer'. It is comprised of 40 or 50 inverted and angled steel discs that you drop in the ground to turn the soil and pull out weeds. I did this for about a hundred acres and was making my last pass. I got 'er stuck. Dale from the next farm over pulled us out a couple days later with his even bigger tractor (also not a John Deere) and it came out with a sucking sound but otherwise rolled free as if it never was stuck. With a modest 'you're welcome' he tipped his hat and nodded at the cat-tails not ten feet away. 'Might aughta not get so close to them cat-tails next time' he benevolently admonished me. Max said it might be a good start for a pond. I asked him what are you going to name it? Remo's Ravine. Last I looked it was holding mucky water pretty good in a double oval shaped baby pond. He said he had never heard of anyone burying a four wheel drive tractor almost to its belly before. I gave him a condescending scowl and said that I counted eight wheels. Why no pictures of the thing actually stuck? 'Cause you don't tote along a shiny little waterproof digital and stand back composing photos while the likes of men such as Max and Dale are undoing what you done did. Of course now I wish I had. That's farming!

That's farming!

2007-07-11T14:56:00.000-06:00

There's no place like home and I don't live in Kansas. I will never be a former future farmer of America. My mom lives in the country and I've always said that, yes it's pretty and peaceful and bucolic and American pastoral and boring. There's nothing to DO there. These last two weeks I helped a friend of mine harvest wheat in west central rural Kansas. I had never farmed before. Now I know what there is to do in the country . . . farm. 24/7 but only for your entire life. It is an all encompassing culture unto its own. Max's farm is going to be fully organic certified by next fall. I was especially grateful for this when the pipe broke and untold gallons of fertilizer gushed firehose like, raining down on me and saturating me in an instant. Good morning and hey, that's farming! There is no electricity on this property. There are no power poles on this or many other of the gridded graded dirt lanes criss crossing this fertile high plain. This place features a barn or 'shed' only. No house. Max has stashed a short bus in the pines and calls that home. I pitched my tent and called that home for a few nights. Apparently chiggers also call that place home. I had never heard of chiggers. Doing some chigger research informed me that they often live in 'chigger islands'. I think my tent enveloped a massive chigger archipelago. Yes I was a regular Cristo draping fabric over an entire ecosystem. I proceeded to move into the barn after three nights. I'm home in Colorado now and I am still suffering newly born chigger bites. You can't see a chigger. They will live on you if you let them. Ya' don't feel the bites, but 12, 24 and even 36 hours later a little red volcano appears. Once you start scratching there is no stopping until the top of the volcano is torn away like St. Helens and blood pours forth like lava. That's farming!

Cycling the windy city.

2007-06-25T21:16:00.000-06:00

Cycling Chicago. Bridget retrieving her bike from the brand new bicycle storage facility in Chicago near the Miracle Mile and Lake Shore Drive.

San Francisco Colorado.

2007-06-25T12:23:00.000-06:00

San Francisco Colorado settled long before the 'Centennial State' became a state I'm sure. Not much here besides a couple of curious hispanic kids watching me take pictures, a convenience store doubling as a living room of a house and the formerly locked and now reopened access to a couple of 14ers. In Montana one of the more arrogant and ignorant people I knew called it 'Condorado' when I said I was moving back. This guy was literally wearing his tool belt while he condemned Colorado as overbuilt. Apparently some carpenters don't know about the word irony. He then departed to the jobsite, pushing poor Bozeman west in spurts of spec' homes forty hours a week. Right on, you just keep yourselves firmly entrenched on the I-70 corridor when you are passing through Colorado where you belong like so many slot cars. Remember, Colorado is crowded enough, so go away.

I take dirt when I can.

2007-06-25T12:06:00.000-06:00

I take dirt when I can. This is Colorado. La Sauses Colorado. It took me a few dirt u-turns and a couple of getting-lost-but-I've-got-a-lot-of-gas-so-I'll-keep-goings later until I passed through La Sauses. Not much, this being the only identifying feature. Last time this store was open, the sign might not have been torn yet. Dust, thorns, billowing willows, beautifully forlorn. Suase is not in my dictionary but suace is and it means willows. Could be a typo? The Willows Colorado. I'll go with it. Reminds my of another town, this one in New Mexico. It means Three Rocks in spanish, but it is similar enough for me, so I prefer to refer to it as Three Feet. Three Feet New Mexico. It'll be a place in a story of mine.

I'm just tremendously lucky.

2007-06-25T11:58:00.000-06:00

That's right and I also don't live in Breck', Dillon, Steamboat, Fraser, Frisco, Silverthorne, Loveland, Eagle or Minturn. But I like skiing most of those places occasionally on week days. All arrogance aside, truth is I am just tremendously lucky. All of the above mentioned places are worlds better than my home town.

Ski fences are so cliche.

2007-06-25T11:29:00.000-06:00

Ski fences are so cliche. Don't get me wrong, some cliche's are okay. I have two pair of skis on Batman's ski fence, maybe three. One pair date from my first season here. I went from Hexcel Honeycomb 185' cms, no, not split-tails, to Rossignal Strato 102's. The old brown planks,they were 210' cms. I learned how to ski on them. I did snow-cat powder-tours on them! Yeah, I'm an expert skier but that doesn't necessarily make me a smart one. I eventually went down to 207's and 204's. But of course that's only because the optimal ski for me would have been 200's. That was years ago and now my longest skis are 190's. I regularly ski 184's and I even have a pair of ... 162's (Atomic B-5 Metron). Oh yeah ... ski fences. I have a pair of Head and my old K2's or Rossi ST's are on the fence also. The above picture is a small part of my ... bike fence. I built a bicycle fence around our garden. It is comprised of four old red bicycles wrapping around and one green Huffy (3 speed) planted in the garden for contrast. These are the tulips, the roses are next and they look great growing through and around the frames and rims. The Mayor even wants to take pictures of it. More later of the whole fence. I live in a ski town. Look closely at the next post, it'll be a hint. Remember, rivalries are not the exclusive terrain of colleges.

Ellie

2007-06-25T11:17:00.000-06:00

Being a Cairn Terrier, Ellie was quick to figure that the food comes from that way. This is a restaurant on the main drag in Crested Butte. I can't remember the name but it's not Main Street. I drove over one day. It's a hundred miles one way across classic Colorado landscape. It's not any designated scenic byway either. The one pass is paved and the other is dirt. I went there to buy a town bike. I bought a late fifties or early sixties Schwinn Panther. It's all original with front, rear racks, tank, all reflectors, original grips, pedals, saddle and tires. It's black. It's a two speed 'layback'. I'll post a pic soon. Oh yeah ... it's Elk Avenue, (Thanks Bridget).

Jerome Prof ssiona Buil g.

2007-06-25T11:07:00.000-06:00

Jerome Prof ssiona Buil g: It's one thing to see this kind of signage on the ubiquitous fast food restaurant or gas station etc. You know the misspelled ones are 1) poor education by the minimum wage teen or 2) not enough of a given letter so substituted with the next most similar equivalent. This sign is, of course, neither. These letters stand permanently affixed to a brick wall. Obviously there has been a little mishap here. It's on a corner on a hill in a town that gets snow. The great irony being the subject matter of the sign itself and the fact that it has been like this for a long time. No thanks, Jerome, I'll use some other professional.

Caution: upside down pedestrians ahead.

2007-06-25T10:45:00.000-06:00

Caution : upside down pedestrians with no hands or feet ahead.

These are the kind of pictures you can get when you are willing to notice, slow down, turn around and backtrack. That's a difficult proposition for most mid-day motorists intent on getting to the next important thing after whisking away from the last. But, luckily for me, I haven't really found a career (or job) yet this summer, so I've plenty of slow down, turn around, backtrack time. By the way, I sometimes feel like the silhouetted graphic adorning the yellow caution is me. Maybe that's why I noticed it.

In Today's Heaven

2007-04-30T16:33:00.000-06:00

One wrong click too soon and they’re all gone, gone, gone. I wonder if you get to see all the pages you accidentally deleted when you go to Heaven. Or, are the pages you’d like to see in Heaven and the bad ones in Hell? You only see what you deserve. Sounds like something God would say. Of course God doesn’t just say anything, he proclaims it and he commands it from the depths of his bellowing soul above the treetops. Even when he whispers, well let’s just say he can’t keep secrets. The man has some serious lungs. He has volume. He could do opera. He never just says things like someone might say, ‘have you seen the remote’ or ‘do you have a value card’. He knows where the remote is. It’s between the cushions. He has a value card. Besides, God doesn’t ask questions. He creates them. Then he divines the answers. He’s the ultimate professor. And we have all heard about his temper. He’d be the last God you’d ever spite. You’d find yourself locked in the truck of a Town Car faster than you could say “it’s the last season of ‘The Sopranos’. The disciple behind the wheel is speeding toward some dead-end dirt in the woods, flicking butts at the dark and telling you to 'Go ahead, scream all you want'.

Many more technological breakthroughs and we’re going to need a brand new, New Testament. I’m pretty sure the old New Testament never mentions e-mail or search engines. It might mention fire walls but that would only be in some purgatorial context. In today’s Heaven you can tell an old soul from a recently deceased one by the piles of deleted documents. The old dead have no documents, deleted or otherwise. No laptops allowed. Remember, ‘you can’t take it with you’. You actually have to read pieces of paper up here. There might be a Cajun restaurant in Hell. But there are no internet cafes in Heaven. Do you have any idea how much that hook up fee would be? These long dead oldsters lived and died before home computers, pathetic. They float around bored out of their fucking minds, eyes rolling back in their heads the way only dead persons can. They gaze blankly through their paper-thin papal skulls, out through their halos up at … up at what? They’re already UP there. They think inappropriate thoughts like, 'Maybe Hell is hell, but I bet it’s not so fucking boring'. They wonder what the people in Hell might be doing today. Whatever it is its hot and colorful and full of excitement. Everybody loves watching a roaring fire. In Hell's Restaurant its, ‘careful, these plates are REALLY hot’. And yes, it is Cajun. I’d like to see you not burn, I mean ‘blacken’ every meal you ever cooked down there.

But up here in ‘Frillyville’ (that’s slang for Heaven) it’s all, ‘Hey, what are you going to do today’? ‘Oh, I don’t know, I might float over to those Maxfield Parrish clouds and not get a bite to eat or drink or sing or dance or pet the dog or fornicate or smoke or lie or cheat or steal or murder or covet thy neighbor’s wife or commit suicide, and you’? They wonder aloud as to why there are never any Maxfield Parrish women reclining in those Maxfield Parrish clouds. Duh, this is Heaven idiot. They wonder to themselves, ‘I thought you only wandered around aimlessly for all eternity if you were dead and stuck on Earth in some old Victorian’. These flaccid white restless souls play harps and make puppy eyes at Peter. They brown nose and kiss ass God, conniving for feathers. Saving for wings, everybody is saving for wings. We call it the ‘Angel Angle’. Word is they keep turning people into angels ‘Down South’. ‘Down South’ is slang for Earth up here. But remember, slang is not allowed, so you’d better whisper unless you really want to find out just how hot and exciting ‘The Deep South’ is. ‘The Deep South’ is slang for Hell up here. Dumb fucks, they don’t even know what being an angel means. I mean Elton John an angel? I can see getting knighted for Mad Man Across the Water, but, an angel? I don’t think so. Don’t ever forget he also did Candle in the Wind. They’re turning so many people into angels down there, well, that the quota is about met. Souls up here are scrambling for the few remaining slots. The raciest rumor booming through our clouds right now is that Bono might be next. I can see that. But, turns out, we’re not talking U2, were talking Sonny. He had a bad voice. He played sidekick to a tall chick. I think Cher’s hair was taller than him. He reemerged years later as a bad mayor and then ended it all by assaulting a Bristlecone Pine with his head while skiing. For that he gets to be an angel? What the fuck is the Pope thinking? How much money did Sonny give to the Vatican? Must have been all of it because I remember he used to sing, ‘They say our love won’t pay the rent, before it earned, our money’s all been spent’.

The new dead could give a shit. They sit off on a cumulus without a single feather to their name, reading. Occasionally they grimace. Often they laugh with self congratulatory smugness, all proud of themselves for something they had forgotten they had written. Some pages they rip to bits and angrily toss off the cloud. They’re cheeks rising to a fine crimson. The shredded pieces fall to earth as paralyzing blizzards on their way to Hell. They snicker to themselves at the old souls drifting about like dust mites. The new dead confide in each other with nods and knowing winks. They are still the newbie gentrifying yuppies that they were in life. They look around and think, ‘Who picked out these hideous pinks and purples’ and ‘I’ve got to paint this place’. In life they bought up brownstones at a pittance from wavering hippies. Ten years earlier the hippies had kicked out the homeless squatters. The yuppies condemned the hippies condemned the homeless, all in equal superior disdain. Of course now the new-rich of exurbia condemn the gentrifying yuppies of yesterday. The hippies fixed them up, a little. They made the stones brown again. They made them livable. Because they wanted to, well, live in them. But, being hippies=artists/homos, they kept much of the funkiness intact. The character of the places, the accidental accents that can only be achieved by time and neglect were preserved with a loving tenderness. Indeed, a corner web of cracked plaster bleeding off-color stains were as much a selling point to them as the potential of these places were to the yuppies to come a decade later.

And another decade after the yuppies arrived, a Volvo went sideways in a paralyzing blizzard on a ski trip to Vermont. With everything taken to its fullest potential, the career, the security, the wife, and the kids all in Cambridge, early retirement coming up quick and what happens? He puts the fucking Volvo in the hardwoods. So now he floats on cirrus reading lost writings. But he can see the potential in these clouds.

How do you like Mexico so far?

2007-04-27T23:14:00.000-06:00

Today is Friday and I’ll be going to Mexico last Tuesday. It’s April and my passport expires last November. I packed Sunday night. We will drive to Denver last Monday. Last Monday a.m. I grabbed my passport and gave it a perfunctory perusing. I stopped as page none grabbed me back. The perfunctoriness transformed into static disbelief. Luckily for all Americans the Bush administration changed the laws concerning travel to the terrorist harboring nations of Canada and Mexico. Yep, you have to have a passport to go down to the donkey shows in Tijuana. You aren’t going to be doing any parasailing in Mazatlan without a valid passport. No more psilocybin pyramid scaling in Palenque. What? You want to do the Cancun spring break thing? Go back to Daytona punk. Surfing Baja is out. Go back to the Huntington pier. Don’t forget your wetsuit. You were hoping to explore ancient Aztec architecture and culture. Study antiquities. Don’t worry about it. All the best shit’s in the museums in New York and D.C.

You will have to display your lovely blue valid United States passport the next time you drive over the Friendship Bridge at the friendliest border in the world. All this just to get to Queen Victoria park or to go up the space needle or to walk the tunnels behind the falls or to ride the Maid of the Mist or to go to the barrel museum or to look at the Devils Whirlpool or just to see the best view of the falls. Maybe you just want to go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not wax museum or the casinos or go on to Niagara on the Lake for wine. You’re not going to go without a passport. Oh, and they wont be stamping it either. They are real enough borders now to require passports but they are not really real enough to get ink on a page. No cool guy world traveler souvenir for you. That’s okay. There is plenty of kitschy crap to buy. You’re at Niagara Falls for god sake. You might as well get your tickets to Frontier days in Cheyenne because they won’t let you in for the Calgary Stampede without a passport. You want to go skiing at Whistler? You might as well be whistling Dixie. The snows better in Colorado anyway. What about Québec? They’re kind of a mini France. Sorry, not without a passport.

Wait a minute. We have hundreds of illegal aliens dying out in the Arizona badlands. They don’t have passports. ‘Unprecedent Bush’ has come to a long sought diplomatic solution, a hard won compromise of good faith representing the best interests of both our great countries. We share a thousand mile border with our neighbors to the south. And with that comes a solemn responsibility to foster openness and promote cooperation. In the interest of mutual respect, solidarity and compassion it has been decided by the ‘Decider’ that we’re going to build a fence. I’m not talking a white picket job either. This fence, just like the Great Wall of China will also not be visible from outer space. This fence, like the Berlin wall, no matter how tall, ridged, thick and long, is of course doomed to failure. Bush is like the opposite of King Midas. Everything King George touches turns to failure.

Workin' Vacation

2007-01-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

The plane about skipped a beat and the heat about burnt the street.

At four a.m. we turned off the waterfalls. Can't be playing electrician and fiddling with the sky blue lenses and Flamingo pink spots with water running. Plus we had to recalibrate the flow. Seems a couple o' drunk tourists decided to take a dip in the 'river' and swum upstream to the falls. Then they decided it would be cool to go behind the falls.

And I admit, it is cool to go behind waterfalls. Especially real ones! I've done the tunnels behind Niagara Falls. I have made my way through the turbulence to get behind Beaver Falls in the Grand Canyon. I have even driven through and then behind a waterfall on a public bus in Bolivia.

These clowns got behind the genuine imitation waterfalls at the Westin but suffered for it. You see, the swimming pool(s) are everywhere. Hot tubs, cold dips, kiddie pools, water slides, swim up bars, water volleyball nets, kidney bean shapes were nearly as ubiquitous as pear shapes and they were nearly as ubiquitous as shapeless masses of under dressed human flesh.

Struggling jiggle pods of unsupported whiteness waddled reluctantly away from food courts as last resorts. They wore preposterous swimsuits that never made it to saltwater and probably wouldn't make it back to Iowa either. Some of the hipper husbands wore the stupid fuckin' sexual innuendo surf t-shirts that you saw everywhere. They won't be wearing those back in Cedar Rapids either. "Get you're stick waxed at Woody's".

So, these two complained that the force of the waterfall was too strong and hurt them. They claimed the power of the fake falls pushed them under. They thought they were gonna' die! If it wasn't for that unexplainable burst of adrenalin that accompanies the relentless desire to live, they wouldn't have found the strength to get out of the pummeling vortex.

When they regained equilibrium and recovered from the vertigo, they found themselves standing on the winding sidewalk that also goes behind the falls. Dazed and stunted and profoundly embarrassed, they latched onto the nearest, easily attained, middle intelligence emotion . . . anger!

They blamed the hotel.

Heaven forbid they actually swim in the ocean if they were looking for a little late night waterborne adventure. There are friggin' sharks an' shit out there. And who knows what kinda' slummy lowlife local might be lurking out on the beach.

They are actually public beaches. What bullshit! I pay all this money to stay at some hotel and they can't even work the local laws to keep the undesirables of the god damned beach.

So no, we didn't go to the ocean. Or the pools for that matter. We were drunk and now you are going to have to fix those falls.

Danny and I turned down the CFS's. We replaced some bulbs and tried not to wake up the flamingos.

Thus began my working vacation on Maui.

Snow Dog

2006-12-24T12:21:00.000-07:00

Paradise Lost and Last

2006-12-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

And so it goes.

I finally get to return to the snows.

One season over and one season begins. Just by riding an airliner cabin.

My last session at Livewire Cafe. My second home. I'm going to sell my board today. Scrape the wax off with a comb. I've seen coffeeshop girls come and go. I've dragged the trash to the side of the road. The difference is that I lived here this time. I know the banks, P.O., hardware, landfill and that food is 'Grinds'.

At least three resident crazy freaks are Lahaina lifers. The fat man on his old fat tired cruiser has been doing slow lazy laps around town for at least fifteen years. And I think it's the same brightly colored yet very scraggly parrot that rides his shoulder. I've never seen one without the other.

The shiny whitehaired Asian guy still discusses his whatever to himself. He posts himself by the tennis courts like a lamp-post and holds court with himself. I think it was the acid. His hair is long and flowing and clean. He is not dissheveled. It's just that sombody needs to check his pH level.

Dirk the jerk roams the streets with a limp that he didn't have when I knew him back in Aspen in the early eighties. He was the kind of guy that liked to get in fights with his friends when he was drunk. And he drank a lot. My first visit to Lahaina in the mid-eighties was the first time I had seen him or thought about him in almost five years. Luckily (for more reasons than one), I had shaved off my big, bushed out, could 'handlebar'it, oh so seventies, and if you still had one today it's a secret 'I'm gay' message mustache in the interim. Dirk didn't recognize me and I let him walk on by. To this day, I see him slinking, shadow to shadow but he doesn't see me.

My favorite by far is the man I wrote a poem about years ago. He is the dark skinned, grey goateed, hold court with disciples and everything, every day at the Banyon Tree. He scribbles scripture on scavenger cardboard and carries a guitar. Sometimes he gets all fired up and stands at the edge of the park and reads scripture out loud, eloquently and with great inflection and emotion. He bellows it out forcefully and well read. He looks you deep in the eye like a real preacher in a real pulpit. Except his pulpit is invisible and his congregation is the flocks of cruieshippers, scrambling around Front Street searching for the perfect schlock.

They travel in packs. They don't make eye contact. They don't dare a glance at the preacher. It's as if he is as invisible to them as his pulpit is to me. He sings and screams the Lord's praises and gestures wildly. Forever grateful for his Front Street homeless state.

And then there's the Pali-walker. In Aspen we used to have 'Standing Man' and his nickname tells you everything you need to know to figure him out. In Lahaina they have a guy who some people refer to as 'Walking Man' or the Pali walker. He has been walking up and down the 'Pali" (highway) for twenty plus years. We are talking serious mileage here. Sometimes he can be seen on the 'otherside.' He's been spotted in Hana. I've seen him numerous times around here and up by Kaanapali.

I have to end now. I will go have one last session of paddle-surfing with Robin down by Kihei. There are no waves, so no actual surfing. I'm selling my board today.

I'm going home but the board will stay.

It's warming up nicely . . .

2006-12-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

Her dog is smaller than Ellie. She just rode up with it riding in the basket. It's a little black mutt looking thing. Not young. Big ears, small head. Cute.

My fingers are swollen and my hands hurt. It's this manual dexterity, intense electrical work. With normal electrical construction work, you do a wide variety of tasks. This well paying piece work is repetitive. As a matter of fact, it's all about repetition. I don't mean to complain, rather I am just commenting because trying to write exacerbates it. I stop often to massage my fingers.

It's warming up nicely. It's gonna be a real nice day.

That was Halsey and my morning mantra in Costa Rica. It's rather versatile and applicable in a variety of places. Hawaii being an obvious one. But it's all relative. After an intense early morning doing "avi" work, if the sun comes out and the weather changes, you could sometimes say it.

Learning to surf - Part 2

2006-11-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

I came to Lahaina for 2 months in September of this year. I'm still here as I write this and the trip has lengthened into three and a half months. I will fly home to Aspen, my wife, my daughter and my dog and my life and job and friends December 17th with a pocket full of cash and my bicycle and my SURFBOARD as my checked luggage. I'm staying with Danny, rent free at his girlfriends house on Front Street. On the correct side of Front Street. The ocean is the back yard.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that Danny is not a surfer? My old friend Bruce came and stayed with us in Aspen a couple winters ago and brought his friend Robin.

Robin is his friend from his days living in Hawaii and Robin still lives in Hawaii. Robin was born and raised in Hawaii. Robin is upper body buffed out from a life in the water. Robin is dark skinned and carries some gnarly abdominal scars. Robin is burly and tattooed. Robin is not native Hawaiian, even though you probably thought he was with a name like 'Robin'. He's some kind of crazy ethnic mix as is often the case here. When Bruce and Robin came to Aspen, they were quite bundled up even after a day on the slopes. It seems that you get cold easily after you spend a bunch of time here. Even at night in the house, you couldn't see much of them what with all the clothes. I didn't give it a second thought at the time.

When I called Robin to tell him I was here in Hawaii, we planned to get together. I drove Danny's '69 Corvette Stingray down to Kehei. Robin lives in Kehei, maybe twenty miles south of Lahaina but a world or two away. If you blindfolded me and dropped me off in almost any neighborhood or mall (of which there are plenty) in Kehei, I would guess maybe somewhere in California only because of the vegetation and ocean. If you deposited me inside one of the suburban houses, looking out a window, I'd be geographically stumped to large general areas. It could be Florida. Hell, it could be Aurora or Highlands Ranch on Colorado's burgeoning Front Range. Anyway, it's brand new suburb land. I was recently assured that my attempt to find the 'old' part of town, thus something maybe interesting, was fruitless only because there is no such place. But, Robin's perfectly immaculate, split leveled, two car garaged, unobtrusively painted house has appreciated immensely in three years. I can appreciate that.

I had this ill gotten, subconscious image of Robin as kind of slight of build. Probably because he is such a nice guy and I only saw him in ski clothes before that day. Whoa, I bet there is some crazy phycology in that. As I slowly nosed the growling 'Vette into Robin's neighborhood, I saw one bad ass looking local in what the directions appeared to tell me was Robins' driveway. Oh great, I thought, it's going to be Corvette talk time with one of Robin's neighbors or worse, maybe this is Robin's never-been-off-the-island-and-damn-proud-of-it-cause-if-you're-not- proud-of-that-you-might-have-to-admit-that-you-have-never-been-anywhere
brother that he forgot to tell me about. Haoles? Duh, take one look at him. He hates all Haoles.

I reconfirmed my scribbled directions and actively avoided making eye contact with this man. Between me and my Corvette, we comprised everything you could see in any direction that didn't belong here. That was the driveway. It was Robin.

Seems like a good kind of friend to have around here. Robin has all the toys. Danny gave me the opportunity to learn how to surf, though, slowly realized. Robin taught me or is teaching me how. Day one with Robin walking into the surf at Kehei Cove, he taught me the eminently important ethics of how it works out there. What to do and not do to avoid getting punched out.

No, ethics is not the word. The word is etiquette. If you don't know and follow the proper etiquette, you are assured a confrontation. Even if you do, one could ensue at any time. I heard two guys cursing each other my first day out with Robin. This was at the beginner beach.

So, Robin tells me etiquette as we walk out. Next, while I'm still walking, this other guy starts asking my techno questions about the board I'm pushing. I had no idea about the board. But, given his questioning, I can ascertain that it is a cool board. Not some floating styrofoam like the rental boards. It's a 12 foot long hollow board. I know that much. More techno. questions from another guy that wanted to sit and talk tech while I wanted to try to catch waves.

I tried to catch waves. Turns out that like skiing and biking, there are technoweenies in surfing. They can talk the shit all day, but can't really surf/ski/bike. Of course some can do both. Talk and perform.

Learning to surf - Part 1

2006-11-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

I came to Hawaii for two weeks in the early Eighties. Surfing was a non-subject. It was so far from my realm that it didn't exist. It wasn't as if I had watched surfers and thought that I could or couldn't do it, I simply didn't see it. We water skied, (on the ocean, Danny still does). We sailed on the Hobie, we partied and traveled in packs.

Many of my old Aspen best friends ended up in Hawaii. All on Maui in Lahaina before a gradual dispersion took place over many years. Nancy has been on Kauai for twenty years. Karen lived on the big island a long time and is now on the mainland doing an extended R.V. assisted travel session. Donna is in Paris. Tim? Bruce is currently in Aruba. He lived in Taos, Sonoma, Vail and other places. Majic is on the 'Other Side'. And of course the unofficial leader of our loosely defined gang, Danny, still lives in Lahaina. Oh yeah, and Moose lives up north in Kahana.

We functioned as a group. Just like in Aspen. But in Hawaii the laid-back island attitude had particularly infected my gang. Hence the unofficial, never written down, but still known moniker nonetheless. I was a visiting member of The Slow Dumb Gang. We also sometimes called ourselves, Club Foot.

The S.D.G. was all funny and overly appropriate. After the fourth day of not actually getting out of the house till well after noon, and doing nothing of significance once we did, I became privately frustrated. Significant in the 'I'm in Hawaii for the first time aren't we supposed to go snorkeling or up Haleakala or something type of tourist activity' significant.

Of course, the stumbling around town in our tattered young group of friends looking for a place that serves breakfast late and booze early to 'hair 'o the dog' our perpetual hang overs is ultimately much more memorable and significant. I mean, how lucky?

We were all pulled to Aspen at the same time from different places for different reasons with different plans. We became instant life long friends sharing those two apartments, #615 and #625 stacked on top of each other in Silver King. We lived out of both places. I as often as not climbed up the outside of the building and came into #625 over the deck rather than used the stairs. Nobody said anything. It was just StevO.

Nancy was from Minnesota. Danny, Florida. Bruce and Jimmy, Connecticut. Richie Boy from N.J. Lucy and Barbara Sue grew up in Aspen. Krazy Kenny from Texas. Johnny D. from N.Y.C. Annie C. from eastern Canada. Donna-wanna from Conn. Majik from R.I. Juan N.M. Chevy? No idea. Ralph and The Good Doctor D? No idea. Shelfish, So Cal. Etc. and I'm omitting a lot.

And now here some of us were, wandering the coveted lanes of Lahaina. So, as I said, I didn't even see surfers then.

I came to Lahaina again for two weeks in the late eighties/early nineties. I think I was on my way to New Zealand that time. Never made it past Lahaina. On my thirteenth day out of fourteen, I took a surf lesson. I saw this guy lounging on the beach next to a bunch of huge soft surfboards. It was the morning, we agreed that I would come back at 4 for an 2 hour private.

During that day, we went to Baby Beach (no longer there) To play Frisbee. At that time I was still newly half deaf, having crashed my bicycle on Main Street in Aspen a few years earlier and used my head as a slowing down device. The beach Frisbee sessions are great, diving catches into the eighty degree ocean. It was the 'Locals' beach and Danny even kept the sailboat there. I was in the zone. As I lunged prone horizontal to the water, I could hear my friends' hoots and hollers. I couldn't make out the words with my one good ear. It wouldn't have mattered anyway as I was already air borne. I could only assume that this was a spectacular leap and hey, I caught it! At the same instant my fingers clutched the disk, I hit the water. But, I also hit the shoal at the same, same time. I bounced off of it the way football players sometimes bounce off the field wrapped around the ball. I gained a pretty accurate relief map of the surface of the shoal on my torso. A big circular abrasion bloomed nicely across my chest. I was also pink from a couple weeks of Hawaii sun.

I showed up for my lesson. A skinny white, I mean, pink boy with a red, soon-to-scab 'drawing' of a shoal across my bony frame. Just to make absolutely sure that it was obvious that I was an totally clueless beginner, he had me put on a pair of white too-big-for-me sneakers before we went in the water at the Break wall with these ridiculous boards. They were highly buoyant. If you couldn't stand up on one of these, just give it up and go the the bowling alley.

Well, I 'got up' yes I 'caught a wave'. It didn't really look like a wave. It looked to me more like a small amount of softly frothing foam running up toward the beach being pushed shoreward by a whole lot of nothing.

The next day I flew home and didn't return to Hawaii till October 2001. Three weeks after 9-11 I flew to Hawaii and stayed for a month. I didn't remember to go try to surf.

Spring of '05 I went to Costa Rica for 2 weeks with my friend Halsey. Halsey wasn't interested in taking lessons or renting one of those big stupid looking boards. We wandered into a hut and rented a couple cool looking surfboards. We proceeded to get pleasantly pummeled for the next several days.

After two days of near death, no breath experiences this stunning girl came walking toward me as I rested and turned pink on the beach. I thought I finally must be getting good at swimming into big waves, getting knocked back further than where I started and doing it over and over till I finally was somewhere beyond the breakers and could finally focus on never even once getting up on the board, and she was coming over to tell me how fast I'm learning.

She sat down, didn't look at me but pointed out to the waves. She said, 'You should swim out over there where there are less breakers, it's a lot easier.' I was elated that someone had been watching progress'. She left. That was it. It helped immensely, I proceeded to get out past the breakers much more quickly and was lucky enough to not catch significantly more waves that I wouldn't have caught without her help. I did end up catching one wave long enough to think 'Wow, I'm ...' then I crashed and realized that the board had even turned slightly under my feet for me.

After 5 days of this we returned our boards and walked away up the northwest oriented beach, never to return. We eventually walked, hitch-hiked and stumbled all the way to Nicaragua and went to the island of Omotepe in Lake Nicaragua. Another story, another time.

From then till this time, I told people about how I 'caught a wave'. I was quick to point out that I was talking in the singular here. I hadn't been catching waves . . . rather, I caught a wave. But that's not the case anymore.

Jaded Nonchalance, the Ultimate Compliment

2006-11-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

That she should mention my jaded nonchalance concerning fireworks affords me the opportunity to elaborate.

I've lived in Aspen twenty years longer than Bridget and have awed at the shows for years. They are the best fireworks shows you will ever see. Aspen can afford it. It is particularly spectacular in the winter with snow covered Aspen Mountain looming out of the darkness with each colorful explosion.

In the 'Old Days,' we used to ski in the 'torch-light' descent during the winter display. At that time all you had to do was show up at the base of 'Ajax' and go. Not that I remember this but I'm sure some years we just went to Little Nell's apres-skiing until it was dark and they fired the lifts back up. So much more convenient than going home getting out of all your ski clothes only to suit back up shortly again. Plus, it left a lot more time to drink.

I've dashed up the Ute Trail on the 4th. I was partying in Wagner Park and finally noticed that it was about to get dark. I bolted to Ute Ave and ascended. Ute Trail is a nasty little switchback infested affair that people train on. I didn't have time for switchbacks! I went straight up the steep creek made crease that gives Ute Trail its boundary. I wasn't cutting switchbacks on the trail. I was next to the trail. I popped over Ute Rock with sweat streaming and my tee-shirt firmly gripped in my teeth. The first people I saw were less than five feet away as I lunged over the top in my obviously agitated state. Their eyes lit in surprise as the first booming scarlets exploding below announced my arrival. I found my friends and tried to calm my heartbeat. The trip down the trail in the dark with no flashlights was harrowing.

I've watched the 4th of July display in Whitefish Montana over Flathead Lake. They shoot the fireworks off of a floating dock out in the lake. It is also quite spectacular, refracting the lake and hinting at the jagged escarpments of the Mission Mountains leaning back against the 'Big Sky' state.

But the second most impressive 4th. of July display I have ever seen was from a rocking chair on the deep porch of the Roosevelt Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. No, they don't allow fireworks in National Parks. It wasn't a bunch of errant teen-agers shooting off Bandito bottle rockets that they secretly bought in Nebraska while Dad was fixing something in the camper and Mom was in the service-station restroom, doing whatever moms do there. It was a slashing voracious thunder storm with tightly choreographed lightning blowing rents in the stacked, blackening clouds. It was Yellowstone, which alone is powerful enough. It was the lesser visited Roosevelt Lodge and the Lamar Valley area. The storm arrived as a northern Wyoming sunset was slowly wrapping up. The pines swung ponderously. Wildlife sniffed around and dashed away with the thunder.

That was all worthy, but the single most spectacular fireworks display I have ever witnessed, and I guess my wife doesn't understand this, it was so stupendous, as it was happening I knew it would never be repeated, matched or topped. It was the kind of show that can leave a person jaded and nonchalant toward any future attempt. I sat out on the grass. I was with this beautiful woman. It was all so new and exciting. I met her that day! I watched fireworks with her the first evening we ever hung out. She was obviously intelligent, articulate and lovely. The venue wasn't the best. We had a kind of sideways, partially blocked view of the event. It was another of the classic Aspen shows, where pretty much the whole time, it's going off as if it were a perpetual Grand Finale. Then comes the Grand Grand Finale. The show ended, the night got back to itself and we all dispersed.

I married Bridget two years later.

So, would someone please explain to me how I am supposed to be excited about any shows after meeting Bridget at an Aspen one?

And hey, lets not overlook the fact that last winter we walked up to Aspen Mountain for the X-Games fireworks. We took Ellie. It was fun and we even walked up the slope a little.

Honolua Bay, Part 2

2006-11-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

I've only got nine minutes left and I was hoping to talk about Honolua Bay and meeting 'Buna' and his brother, whose face was half deep tattoo.

Buna told me stories about his grandfather surfing here when he was young. At that time you had to either be dropped off by a boat or take a rugged horse back trip hauling your surfboard to get to this mythical bay.

He told me to paddle over whenever I see him and I told him that if he ever sees an old blue Corvette parked around, then I'm there.

He saw the car that day and I really hope to catch back up with this guy. I even thought about if I were to ever get a tattoo, it would be through these guys.

I can only assume they didn't come into Lahaina and get them at 'Skindeep' or any other tattoo assembly line.

Chronic Observer

2006-11-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'm just a lucky of the luckiest kinda guy who ended up happily in Colorado.

I know there is the real world of yer' supposed to do this here whatever by this age or live in a place this here so you can justify yer' John Deere.

I am not looking for that. I am looking. I have recently realized that. I am a chronic observer. Watch everything around me and want to write it down.

I went to Honolua Beach today. It's the Mecca of surfing. Me? I'm a beginner. But, I am lucky enough to be a beginner surfer on Maui.

Slippers

2006-11-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

I wrote a letter on an envelope.

Now . . . why would a fella write a letter on an envelope? Well, because the smallest amount of envelopes I could buy at the nearest ABC store was a box of 50. I'm here for 5 more weeks. If I write 10 letters a week, well, I'll have to scramble to find one more envelope at the end 'cause I so brazenly used this one.

I did it. Yesterday, I finished the 5th floor. I hung the last few vanities, put bulbs in and then hung 57 bath trims. 9 am to 10:30 pm.

Today I'm getting a later start, but I drove the 'Vette so I can work late. I'm back to demo/rough the 4th. My feet hurt from standing on the edges of bathtubs and my wrists hurt from the twist. My surfboard suffers lonely neglect.

Drag races Friday night! My last chance to get some t-shirts.

More coffee, boy on an ape hanger handlebarred beach cruiser just strolled, in a slowly rolling troll down Front Street. The surfboard he carried bit at the gentle tip of his breeze, nosing instinctively out to sea. There is a proper speed to ride to maximize coolness, It's slow, effortless pedal strokes. You don't want your slippers (flip flops) coming off. But too slow and you weave like a tike on a trike. I always go super uncool, way-to-fast, road-bike-speed.

But I'm old, I got grey hair flowin', salt and pepper eyebrows accent the graying side burns. Let's not talk ear hair, shall we? No one can see my tattoos 'cause of the caucasian colored ink. I got strong lookin' legs but no one looks at that. All these people have been ocean swimming their whole lives. Not me!! Look at my arms!

I'll be back!

2006-11-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

That sun spits out vents through rents in Lanai's cloud veil. Chips and shards of supercharged silver and blinding white glare, burn off the sea and heat the blooming plumeria tree. Afternoon, a couple hours shy of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction sun burnt and purple sunset sky, giving the night another try.

This morning would have been a water ski day. We watched with our surfboards as the glass said 'kiss my ass' and our wax melted. So Robin pulled out the big long hollow boards and paddles.

We got wet.

My road bike is demoralized as it has turned its 'Dura-Ace' components to being my overpriced, fragile commuter bike. I can ride bikes in Colorado, but I can't surf there. I can't surf here either . . . yet.

Paddle-surfing. It's apparently the oldest known form of surfing. There are petroglyphs of paddle-surfers carved in lava somewhere.

I just made that up, and I was expecting some punchline to appear but none did. I love the line and the thought though. Plus, it's as likely as not to be true. I know there are petroglyphs here. And I also know there are petroglyphs of skiers in Scandinavia somewhere.

Okay, paddle-surfing. You stand up on the board and propel yourself forward with a paddle. People actually surf waves this way. Or you can travel laterally to the beach up or down the shoreline. It's a great balance exercise. And great for regular surfing.

I'm sorry, but this is crap! I'm here to interrupt myself. It's almost 5 and I'm typin' away like some kind of kin unathletic whatever.

I can write more later, when it's dark.

I can't surf when it's dark, I can hardly surf when it's light.

I'll be back. But remember, surf's NOT up!

Debt of Gratitude

2006-11-05T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sittin' here totally SOLO on the beach, at the house, the three bedroom, two bath, ocean FRONT, pointed-toward-the-sunset, only one hot-tub and four Tiki torches between me and the 80' Pacific ocean, full moon rising, all-by-my-lonesome, 'ain't got nobody to talk to, especially someone that could understand me, empty house.

An' all I kin do is write clever shit with cool speling.

I'm listening to 'They Might Be Giants' C.D. 'Flood.' A truly great album.

Forget this! I'm going out to the Point. That's where the outdoor dinner table lives out on the Lanai (porch). A little concrete enclave that juts slightly out into the sea from the edge of the Lanai.

This place is really good.

My Friend EG, best man in my wedding, he's been an electrician for twenty five years. He does okay. He sure 'ain't gettin' rich. He has been renting and living the content bachelor, always tons-o-roommates, no worries, Island lifestyle for as long as I have known him. And I've known him since I lived that way too. That's why I know him.

So, six months ago, he meets this girl, GF. EG ain't had too many girlfriends over the years. Turns out that after living (renting) at an ocean front house for 8 years, they actually finally sold the house, and EG had to move out. I don't know if I understand this exactly right but, GF, his new girlfriend, BUYS not his house but the house next door. EG moves in by knocking down a fence and carrying his stuff from one house to the next.

Except now he's rent free. And, so am I! On the friggin' beach in ... no, not some place like So. Cal. No, I'm less than 50 miles from 'Jaws', look that up on Google! I'm on friggin' Maui!

And, this is the 4th time! I owe EG a debt of gratitude. Good thing 'cause if it was any other kinda' debt, I don't know How I would ever repay it.

Halloween in Lahaina. I was the pineapple truck. I built it. It was the best of many great vehicles we created for our costumes. It's important to me that people know that I'm a real artist. I got some real talent. Mom's an artist.

I just can't remember creating or showing any art to any of my Montana friends. Or writings.

I'm rambling, on screen.

I'll be flying back home on Dec. 17th. Working immediately thereafter.

Wearing Thin

2006-11-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

I'm at the deli/general store. The parrot named Kehau sits on his branch and cleans his feathers.

Part of this scene is wearing thin. Last night, I walked into town and at the banyan tree, this glassy-eyed teen started following me, so I stopped and leaned up against a post and watched him. That confused him and he slowed down and then did a slow, erratic, not-casual loop on the periphery around me. He mumbled some gibberish threat as if I was the trouble-maker here. I just kept a casual eye on him and never said a word.

This morning, one of the staggering, recurring bums started with, "Hey brother, could you . . ." I held up my hand, walked away and heard his voice go from plead to threat, "I'll punch you," etc . . . as he walked away.

You know, I'm just not interested.

My dad used to talk about how everyone said hi in Aspen. He would take that home to Rochester with him. He would say hi on the street there. After a couple of days of people looking at him like he's weird or not acknowledging him at all, he stopped.

I've learned to walk a little more aggressively here. I've learned not to say hi. I've learned about no eye contact and to maintain a tough guy poker face with a touch of menace in it.

I'm not interested in becoming that guy out of necessity. It's b.s.

Stellar and Amazing

2006-10-27T14:05:00.000-06:00

EG just left for Bali today with his girlfriend for two weeks. So, I am living in this oceanfront house alone. We tried to have the family come over but they just couldn't take the time off right now.

You do understand what I mean by oceanfront, yeah? You know, one side of the house faces the yard and the street and neighborhood. Not that I ever saw the show but one of the boats used in 'Baywatch Hawaii' lives right across the street. It's all so Hawaii normal, with streetlights, telephone poles, electrical wires mailboxes, garbage cans, stray cats and cars all crowding little two lane Front street.

But then you walk in the house, or around the house through the yard, yard being a term meaning wild, overgrown, beautiful, lush ground with Starfruit trees, a giant Mango tree, an Avocado tree, Banana trees, ginger flowers, Hibiscus, Plumeria, Taro and all the other stuff that I don't know what it is crowding and jockeying for the abundant sun, the occasional rain and the limited but fertile soil. You have to cut it down constantly because if you don't, whatever it is that you use to cut it down with will be swallowed up in the brand new undergrowth and never seen again.

One way or another, you make your way to the back of the house. From the back deck (lanai in Hawaiian), you are ten feet from the Pacific. The only things in your way are a couple worn wooden steps and a hot tub.

The island of Lanai is right across the channel. The nice thing about Lanai is that you can't see any lights on it at night. Only a few hundred people live on it but that's on the other side.

This cove here is called Shark Pit. I love that name. There is a surf break three hundred yards out and there are surfers there from six a.m. through sunset. It's a gnarly break.

My goal is to someday be able to surf it. Otherwise, it is so dang inconvenient. I have to walk up the beach past zillion dollar a night hotels to get to the breakwall. Or, I have to drive south for 7 minutes in Danny's 69' Corvette Stingray with the surfboard strapped in the passenger side to try to surf at another great beginner spot.

It's pretty stellar and it's amazing how I get to live my life. I'm exquisitely lucky, and at the same time have made choices along the way that have contributed.

Oh, and since it's all west facing, great sunsets, too.

Paying by the minute

2006-10-25T09:30:00.000-06:00

It's a good thing I have this internet cafe, surfing and that I found this author to distract me and mask missing my family.

The bums are becoming redundant, boring and less interesting by the day. The tourists are one giant jiggling mob of middle class extravagance. I want less and less to go into any of these shops.

That little deli I found is cool. I'll dig up a niche. I have to for survival. I think I'll even go grocery shopping after EG is gone.

Time goes by quickly when you pay by the minute.

Suddenly, these internet cafe expenses are enough to keep track of. Seems like I bought a couple hours a minute ago and now I am down to 7 minutes already.

I've never been to Greenwich but I'm pretty sure time doesn't work that way.

I'll need to try to force myself to get out in the surf as often as possible the next couple weeks. EG will be gone and keeping distracted will be more difficult.

I feel some deep low missing the family, the dog, home and friends. 3 minutes left. It's 7:30 a.m. and I'll go off to work here shortly. I might have another cup o' coffee first though.

Wow, that was interesting reading! Gotta go.

Sea to Ski

2006-10-24T07:29:00.000-06:00

The absolute finish date for this project is Dec. 15th.

I just changed my return date with the airline from Nov. 2nd. to Dec. 17th. I'll go straight from sea to ski. It should be quite the radical transition.

I get a bit more tan everyday here and I am pretending that my hair is streaking blond. It's like eighty degrees everyday. High humidity. I'm sitting here with no shirt on in the cafe and it's normal. It's taking awhile to get used to the fact that I can go in most places wearing nothing more than wet shorts and slippers (flip-flops) or just shorts.

Plus, and maybe most importantly, I'm at sea level and I live at 8000 feet in Aspen and will immediately be going up to 12,000 feet at patrol.

It will be with a bunch of crusty, greyhaired ski patrollers. I am quite sure at least two of them in particular will refuse to accept that I have been working my butt off over here, often six days a week. They will just remember that I was in Hawaii while they set up the mountain.

So, they will have a bigger chip on their shoulders than usual. I completely expect to be loaded up with heavy stuff to carry up the ridge as soon as I get back. I'll be cold and tired and more than happy to do it.

My patrol director (boss) is cool and understands what I'm doing over here and has told me to expect getting shit from the guys all winter. It's mostly just in fun but . . .

The Inevitable Hawaiian Christmas

2006-10-23T07:25:00.000-06:00

The song playing right now is some old lounge tune called, 'It's Cold Outside'

I guess I should brace myself for the inevitable Hawaiian Christmas to start up soon.

Santa in shorts.

Santa surfing.

Santa laying on the beach.

Santa flying across a Hawaiian sunset sky. He will be arcing a hard turn above the ocean. He will be being towed by a school of red nosed dolphins wearing leis as presents fall off the back of the sled.

Santa sailing.

Santa driving the tourist submarine.

Santa snorkeling with elves.

Santa scuba diving and delivering presents to eels and lobsters lounging on a bright impossibly colorful reef full of brilliant fish.

Santa . . . Well, I guess I got that idea across.

Coolness factor

2006-10-22T13:02:00.000-06:00

It was actually almost cool enough last night to wear long pants! I wore my jeans. It was an exciting new way to dress.

Well, it most definitely is not Gaudi.

This coffee shop girl who has the long gnarled dreads and isn't particularly attractive and still doesn't acknowledge me (even though all the others do) just asked the guy showing her pictures of his trip to Europe if that was Gaudi. I looked over my shoulder at the picture and as far as I could tell it was a cathedral I saw in Florence. Even if it isn't the same one, it is full on catholic church architecture and nothing remotely similar to Gaudi. Whatever. She is not as cool as she thinks. She probably owns the place.

I've come back to EG's (Electrician Guy) place more than once to see him sitting alone watching some random old black and white movie. Not one he rented, but just the one that happens to be on. That's the last thing I would be watching and even the first thing I would be watching I don't watch.

He's an interesting character. For all his John Wayne bluster, he's really more than that. He has the ability to apologize. The other day at this different job site I went to with him, he warned me that it was behind schedule and everyone was all stressed out and being assholes. As soon as we walked in, this spike haired, both ear pierced foreman started going off on EG. He was yelling and insulting and belittling him even. EG just didn't say much and kept working.

I was more pissed and ready to fight than he was. I never said a word to this dick. Later as I was hanging a fan in a bathroom, he walked in. It was just him and me in the room. He said 'how's it going' or something to that effect. I didn't acknowlege him in any way. It was obvious.

EG apologized for him later, and for this other guy that also went off on both of us because we were on the carpet with shoes on. EG was saying that they both are usually really cool and nice guys.

Just goes against the grain of the manly EG image. I mean all this complimentarily.

Life as a Local

2006-10-19T08:08:00.000-06:00

Checked the mailbox yesterday. I paid bills, went to the hardware store. I put out the recycle. Watered the plants. Cleaned the garage and then took a nap. After sweeping the Plumeria leaves and dropped flowers off the lanai, I waxed my board.

Yesterday, as I rode my bike toward the Westin, I ran into Dennis on the highway. Last week, as I paddled around and actually caught a few small waves, I ran into some guys I know from work out in the water.

At the places I frequent, like this internet cafe and a couple lunch spots, people are beginning to ask me if I live here. I say yes (you should always answer yes to this question regardless) and they drop the price of lunch, coffee and computer time.

I will be bringing home a surf-board and a scar on the back of my left hand. I will also be returning to Colorado with an improved financial situation.

I'm trying to be a better than complete rank beginner surfer before I get home.

And I am trying to learn how to blow a Conch shell, (What? I love it when I talk dirty!) At the Tuesday night dinner parties, dinner is announced by the blowing of the feudal horn. The Conch shell done right is very loud and environmentally appropriate, like drums on a distant torchlit beach. The environment being the back yard of Bunt and Annie's home on the ocean. It's not a big house but it is historical, being the former home of the sugar mill boss. It's a hundred years old with traditional architecture. The yard is mercifully small and the cocktail 'lounge' is perched on the point, jutting out slightly into the sea (kai) along the breakwall. When the shell sounds, it's time to move to the lanai (porch) for an outdoor dinner and intelligent conversation. The roof of this deck area that comfortably seats 10 to 15 people is a wooden lattice work overgrown with some awesome flowering plant that scents the already heady air with a tropical fragrance. These white flowers hang down their vines and are constantly falling on us. That is a memory I'll keep and value. Eating dinner with this incredible collection of characters while big white flowers fall in our food and laps and hair like concentrated snowflakes somehow reminding me of home.

Halloween is coming and it's serious business around here. The group has won first place two or three years running and then donated the winnings to some worthy cause. This year, we are going as traffic. I'm going to be a pineapple truck! I'll take pics of all of us as these guys spend money on materials and create works of art. Luckily, I'm one of those creative types and should be able to hold my own.

The first question from the ladies present on Tuesdays is if my wife and/or daughter are coming over. We've talked about it and they would like to meet my family and I'd like my family to experience this scene. I've a feeling they will, if not this time, next. I'm making some friends here.

Out of time.

Chicken, anyone?

2006-10-15T19:21:00.000-06:00

I have some news. I felt the first earthquake tremors of my life this morning! Well, once in Mexico, Jack and I were both woken up in the middle of the night. But it was very subtle and we never knew for sure if it was a small tremor or some other third world shake.

This morning was most unsubtle. I was sleeping at Robin's and at about 7:15, I first heard a loud rumbling like a train coming through the doggie door. The tourist sugercane train is narrow gauge and on the 'other side'. Then the bed started shaking and the mirrored closet door rattled. I looked outside and decided it was some weird wind event. It wasn't. I lay back down and a few minutes later it happened again. Okay, okay! I'll get up! I did.

The power was out at Robin's. I fed the dogs and wandered around the house, deciding it must have been earthquake tremors. I tried to call the wife. Not working. We can make local calls but some tower or whatever must have been damaged. I couldn't leave in our decided upon fashion, which was to go in and out through the garage, using the garage door opener as my locking mechanism. Door wouldn't open. So I left through the front door locking myself out on my way.

The neighborhood looked normal. There were not any screeching sirens or any plumes of billowing acrid blackness roiling back against the slate sky. I drove into Kehei. No stop lights working. Cops acting as traffic directors. Remember this is all in the Corvette. I feel like they should pull me over for no reason in that car. No power in Kehei. Drove by Starbucks 'cause if any one would . . .

They didn't.

People sat around the outside tables at Starbucks and all the other little restaurants as if it were just another busy Sunday morning breakfast party. But there were no lights, no wait people scurrying, never with empty hands, hoping to fill empty pockets. There were no coffee cups and of all the sidewalk wanderers, none sipped 'go-cups'. Okay, I'll go back to Lahaina.

Between the two towns, you can see a vertical row of about 15 of those giant windmills like in California. They stretch away up this mountain ridge. They were all static. No power on the whole island. You know, the whole time I've been here, it hasn't felt especially like an island. Not sure what that's supposed to feel like. But once the power was out and my lines of communication to home were severed, I suddenly realized how I am on a tiny archipelago speckling a miniscule percentage of the Pacific Ocean. It doesn't bother me or freak me out. It still feels like I could get in the 'vette if I wanted to and drive to Cisco, Utah!

I got to Lahaina and Livewire was open and the computers were up and running. But the street lights were still dead as I got here. On the way over, there were lines of people out the door to an ABC Store. There was a long line across a parking lot in Kehei leading to a smoking, hissing portable spit with chickens roasting away. It already looked like some kind of big disaster.

It's a different deal here on Maui. It's much too real for me. Aspen is my/our real world but I guess there is some merit grudgingly admitted by me to the people who say Aspen is not the real world. Here, you have the whole bad-ass, tough-guy thing going on in your face. Reverse prejudice doesn't care if I'm not prejudiced. My arms and hands get cut up at work and my legs and feet get cut up at play (trying to surf). The cops are gnarly and they are always hiring. They even advertise on T.V. in infomercial fashion and reveal the pay. Let's just say it's less than I'm making.

Homelessness is year-round and prevalent. Crazies and old burn-outs from the sixties do their unchoreographed solitaire waltzes and tangos in the mangos. Graffiti lives at the boarded up former home on Front Street that was the coffeeshop I went to last time I was here. There is a lot of broken glass along the bike path. I've gotten two flats so far.

The landlubber cruise ship hoards wander quick in packs like schools of blind fish. They love it and take pictures of signs and seascapes. Even when they look at the photos, they won't notice the disreputable characters lounging menacingly on the benches. Corners of parking lots are overgrown with vegetation and provide shape for shady doings.

On the other hand, it is staggeringly beautiful. Mountains into oceans will always do that. The ocean is warm! If you did do the tourist trail, you would see exactly what you would expect to see and love it.

I like to live somewhere considered not to be the real world. But when I travel, I seek out the grit behind the skit. I wonder about the angry brother of a handsome Hawaiian man who works the hotels and juggles flame, wearing grass. I talk to the crippled skinny black man, wheelchair parked daily somewhere on Front Street. He never once asks me for money. He just gently suggests reading the bible.

I read the letters to the editor, not the dining guide. I look for something to bring home that is not for sale in the trinket kiosks. Experience, understanding, cultural awareness, respect and maybe a dash-board hula dancer or two is what I want.

"And the palm trees are waving goodbye in the breeze." I wrote that line years ago in Mexico. The difference between Lahaina and Aspen? In Aspen, it says 'caution, falling ice!' In Lahaina, it says 'caution, falling coconuts!' And they mean it.

It should be one hell of a transition sea to ski. Twelve minutes left out of this six dollar hour. It's overcast and windy. There was nobody in the ocean this morning and the waves were churning away like a big hand scooping sand.

Annie called me to make sure we were alright. So the news of these tremors made it to the mainland.

I saw pictures of Buffalo's 'perfect storm' on the T.V. last night. Pretty distant and foreign looking to me, whereas once I grew up in that landscape and didn't even think about it 'cause it was so normal.

The idea of actually surfing was abstract even a couple years ago. I remember wanting to buy a surf-board anyway 'cause they look so cool. I got up four times yesterday. If the power's out, you can still surf. I'm going this afternoon, unless I get there and there are waves but nobody out. I may be a beginner surfer but I'm not a beginner observer and thinker. I know that if there is a bunch of untracked snow on one part of a run and lots of skiers have already been skiing around there, that there is probably a good reason that they are not going there.

If we need to pick between the wife and daughter coming over here or us sending Rachel to Europe, I would pick the latter. Everytime, though, I think about having a house on the beach and car available, I'm torn. I want to have some savings after all this. Also, there is a very good possibility that this opportunity will be available to us in the future.

Gotta go, I'm about out of time.

2006-05-31T22:18:00.000-06:00

I've got more nick-names than you and I can only hear out of one ear...

2006-05-31T21:50:00.000-06:00