Sagas of “The New Neighbor”

It’s the first day of class and I’m up early to set the pulse of my first semester of California State College. I wake to another floor only this time it’s carpet and I’ve paid to call it mine. Everything I own is taped up inside boxes that once shipped prescription bottles, not the drugs themselves, the little tan plastic containers with lock tight tops. These boxes are stacked in various parts of my apartment based on weight.

The heavy ones are stacked where I imagine a bookshelf will be the day I can find one on the side of the road. The lighter ones are in the kitchen, and all the duffle bags, panniers, and stuff sacks are piled in the closet.

It’s not that I didn’t label them; no- I did a very fine job of that. The problem is that I got too creative with my labels and wrote things like “kitten” on the box of old notebooks and “drug lab materials” on the crate with my crock-pot.

I try to run a routine that once helped me feel human in a right-angled environment. I figure it will help eventually, like flexing a bicep in obesity, one step at a time- I will acclimate.

I try to turn the rusty wheels of my morning meditation. With all the traditional specs of spiritual materialism packed away, I grab a utility flashlight to help woo my awareness into calm abiding. I once worked with a guy at a Dharma center who felt like that’s all meditation was, just an elaborate act to romance your self into relaxation. I can’t disagree, but without the incense, tankas, offering bowls, and silk brocades; and only a single utility flashlight propped against the retro wood paneled wall- I decided I am a cheap meglo-romantic softly vanquishing the roots of my self-clinging. Covered in dust as my Dharma may be, the sit goes smoothly. A mosquito drinks her breakfast from my knee and I remember how it is to observe the rise and fall.

Afterward, I’m wondering how I moved all these boxes into my house and now I can’t find a single spoon. My oat cereal is marinating in the backcountry coffee press. I can't find a single bowl. Apparently I didn’t pack it in the box labeled “In case of fire, rescue me first” or any of the three named after South American authors.

I start scrambling around my house for anything that my double as a scooping utensil. I search my school supplies, my tool box (there must be something in a toolbox right), I wonder if I could just carve a utensil out of the abundant cardboard. Meanwhile, the soggy set sets in.

I end up sitting in on my living room carpet in the filtering dawn light, sipping my oats from the lip of the coffee press. Day one my junior year has begun.

Aftermathamatical realities

After love, I believe change is our greatest truth. Through the summer I maintained that with bicycle touring, as with any great adventure, we were either running from something or to something, and I wonder now if that something is the change itself.

On the other side of summer, back in Chico Californialand, things move with the grace of squares slipping into spheres.

I have returned to a land of material make believe and ego implants.

The streets I knew as a child have come wrought with young men, desperate for acceptance; their future is an uncertain landscape of economic aggression. They offer little to the city beyond their fathers’ money and the Sally Mae loan they whittle away in any of the dozen sports bars.

Opposite them are the scantly clad housewife revolutionaries. Confused by their blooming sexuality, intoxicated with white privilege, and finally out of their fathers sight- they stir the flat brimmed designer stallions into a frenzy like pollen to the honey bee.

SUV’s and lifted F-150’s congest the greenways. Anthems of 50-cent and Guinn Stephani drone.

Douche bags and brutes.

There is no place like home

There is no place like home

There is no place like this.

I am growing roots. Clipping my wings. Performing mental emotional Judo with the blank stares and storefronts on the street. Erking through grocery isles and measuring the length of my stay by amounts Dill and Cumen I purchase. I take the licks to my heart and mend the bruise with places I know will always accept me. I ride the streets like I own them. And I do. I paid for them with my youth and everyday I settled with them as a teenager. And I pay now, as I watch them slip further into the homogeneous joy of pop culture keepsakes- the cars keep coming. Someday they may even catch me. If that day ever comes and it’s you behind the wheel, I hope you have money- because I’m going to take it all… and your fingers too.

When approaching death, everything moves is clip.

Durham - Gloucester, MA (64 Miles)

5:45am EST
Wake to the tap of my unkempt finger nails rubbing the chilly leniloulm of another cafetera floor. First thought: “This is it. Today we ride to the Atlantic Ocean.”
CUT
7:57
Big ring final day doggie dares. 60+ miles in the tough guy gear ratio. I ride a 52x11 and crank down mountains- today, I give my quads a final hurrah!
CUT
8:20
We ride as a pack (at least fifteen of us anyway). For the first time all summer instead of being surrounded by cyclists, I feel like I’m on a group ride. The big ringers follow up the rear- spirits gleem. Suddenly the landspave shifts from the backroad parkllke canopy of maples and oaks to the edge of a mornig commute and I realize we just passed through our last moments of peace.
CUT
Noonish
Five of us break off into a line and race the final 30 miles. Hills become monsters as we grind the large gears, pushing each other to keep over 25. Cars snake of miles in gridlock between the seaside hamlets, we blow through with grace and gall.
Later, Papa Neil tells us that while he was unable to ride this section, he followed from the sag wagon and felt that watching us race through the streets was more a thrill than riding with all the traffic. Again.. You never know how fill the world on a bicycle.
CUT
Moments later
I think they ought to make more county roads into state parks. 3.2 mles of state park land just after Gtizzlies Ice Cream shoppe, 2.2 more miles of state park roadway after Muddy Love Creek.
CUT
No later than half twelve.
Gloucester is in a frenzy. We peel between lanes and crosswalks, whisking by onlookers and fair goers. There is a lobsterfest this weekend, the crowd is thick with weathered faces and accents as rich as the chowder. We cross a draw bridge, round a corner on the yellow light, up a hill, follow a yellow arrow- and it’s over. It’s over. The bicycle ride has ended.
CUT
Til 1:30
Muddlement. What has been unyealdingly surreal from day one to 63, is now defenatly not making sence. Folks stand around, sweating in their lycra, hearts still racing. Loved ones fill the parking lot with their digital flash bulbs ablaze, still others are already changed and starting their departure with curt farewells and fast getways.
CUT
1:31
The Gloucester police car starts it’s sirens and I’m waving my camera over head- struggling to gobble up the memory. We’re reciving a full escort with sirens, horn blaps, and hand claps, straight thru the lobster bake down to the seaside that swallows salors for Sunday.
It’s a silly pomp we’ve been expecting for days, a funny farewell to the destination we found a thousand miles ago buried within ourselves.
Everywhere around me my summer companions are beaming, laughing in ways I’ve never seen.
Bike cleats clatter against the rocky New England shore as some go to dip tires into the Atlantic. Others hoist their frames over their heads while still others rifle though the clattering digital cameras dangling from their wrists- racing to capture a dozen precious moments.
For me the ride has ended days ago. Not within a single swoop, but in the peaceful groves of maple though Vermont, in the wheatherd headstones of New Hamshire which stick from the earth like chiped tongues. Right now it’s just another eddy of Cycle America bliss emptyness that has come to puncuate our summer.
CUT
6:40
Boozing in the Massacusets Bay. Closure to seal the end. Looking into the black waters of the Atlantic, I’m certain there are more goodbyes yet to bid farewell.
CUT

This open-ended soliloquy..

We are sliced bananas and cheerios sopping up sink grime in the boys locker room, we are the eye boogers you find at dinner time, we are the showers you have not used since high school, and we are the smell you can not get off your feet, we are three hours of sleep eating standing up in a four way conversation, our cell phone is still ringing, we are the drizzle that turns Washington green, we are one thousand dollars of gatoraide, we are coffee on the hour, we are the lines at the airport and the airport itself, we are the anticipation of tomorrows greatest day of your life, we can not wait to get a drink, we are locked in a bathroom stall and alone for the first ten minutes since June 4th, we are headlamps searching for the broken blood vessel, we are here and now there and back- but we must be going, we are impossible, we are the sunset of Montana’s Hell Gate Canyon- peach and crimson columns of dusk splitting midnight blue drizzle clouds, we wear the lycra booties, we slept on your basketball court and left no trace, we waited all day for you, we are the river valleys of Western Montana opening into boundless green prairies, we are lost on the North Fork of the Cor’de Lane River, we are that white canopy along the roadside serving pot stickers, tamales, watermelon and hickma salads, apple garlic sausages, and dried fruit from every corner of the globe, we are your highways in need of better care, we are the stench of roadkill and wild flowers, we are sunblock over both lips and a full can of deet on our tent- and how did our tent get up there anyway? we are what’s new on the dry erase board and tomorrow we are the little yellow arrows at your towns single four lane crossing and where were we yesterday? We are the longest route meeting, the beer that helped us miss it- and we can also ride a beer sled. we hiss and zip in symphony at daybreak but we have been awake for hours, we are not who we thought we were we’re more, we are reasons we can’t explain, we are a Penski moving van named “the yellow submarine”,
and yes-
we rode this bicycle from the Pacific Ocean.

WTF Wall Drug?!

The roadside attraction is quintessential Americana. Where els beyond the history books of public schooling can we go to understand our culture? But I promise- That high caloric, salty meat and buttery potatoes of our rich American heritage is out there, just below the off ramp.

Behind the corroded gates of the Alien Watch towers in Southern Colorado to the wooden board walks of Deadwood South Dakota, and in the galleries of arrowheads, mammoth tusks, Sooner tracks, shoot ‘em ups, and golden spikes there is the land made for you and me.

If the tapestry of our cultural and technological destiny is threaded by New Deal interstates and county byways, and along every blue vein of the map the mighty blood of capitalism runs, it is the heartbeat of the combustible consumer who turns history to profit and profit into culture.
If this is so then the Mid West is a crucible for gewgaws, tchotchkes, and the tawdry doohickeys history that panders to this American tourist class.

Though my life and travels, I have occasionally witness the Wall Drug bumper sticker. I will see one thoughtlessly slapped to a clankety rust stained bumper of an ancient station wagon or an early model of the Mini Van at the red light or at the laundry mat. The infamous Wall Drug sticker seems to simply manifest tattered and speckled with mud; always sharing space with out dated election stickers and other bumper tags that defend personal freedoms, honk horns and the right to flick boogers, why even the Wall Drug name itself contains a certain foolish allure that is somehow difficult to ignore.

And so for all that time, I kept wondering “What or who is this Wall Drug”?

I once imagined Wall Drug to be everything from a coffee shop in North Beach, an underground apothecary, or a campy inner culture akin to the Church of Subgenus.
As it turns out, I was almost right while 100% completely wrong.

Established in the last years of the Depression by Ted and Dorothy Hustead, the Wall Drug Store was as a commissary along the dusty flung Southern route though South Dakota, Wall Drug featured ice water and an honest bottomless cup of coffee.

Alas, long ago are the days of WD’s quaint hospitality and sensible service along an otherwise abysmal scratch of dusty American highway. Today, with a swarm of garish billboards that cloud the horizon for five hours in either direction, Wall Drug boasts shooting ranges, diners from every era, a covered wagon, native art (made in China), natural (pumped) springs, the 5 cent cup of coffee (farmers brothers), a Tyrannosaurs Rex (which howls and sways like a salvaged one off from the Universal Studio’s factory), an animated life-size orchestra, a church (I do want to get married at Wall Drug though, honestly- and I did almost proposed to the nineteen year old Russian girl who made my garden burger), a replica of the Mount Rushmore, life size wooden trollops.


Wall Drug, as it turns out, is a clearinghouse of kitsch. Everything you picked up on your family’s trip to the monument of Sitting Bull last summer that ended up on the bottom of your closet- that was the shit you got at Wall Drug. Did you think that South Dakota thermometer with a cowboy sitting on a toilet was going to look funny in the office? Well it didn’t, and now it’s in a California landfill, so thanks for polluting the Golden State with rubbish from the Mount Rushmore State, ass.

I would guesstimate well over half of what you can purchase at Wall Drug, has to do with Wall Drug. It’s a fucking meta-concept like SPAM and Jim Jarmush films! Wall Drug either fills a niche for a sliver of America who still believes that quirk is camp and that clever is as stoopid does, thus making it authentic kitsch and somehow pure genius (or as genius as becoming famous for giving away water).

OR!

It’s the yarn pulled over the eyes of every weary traveler traversing the Dakotas on their way to better things, they become hopelessly bludgeoned by the profuse (and global) advertising campaign, whose billboards blot the open planes for hours in either direction. Without buffalo or Native culture, with only the sizes of tumbleweeds to experience, there is nothing left of the Southern Dakotas- except, the Wall Drug.

And so, it succeeds by default.

Wall Drug is that last person sitting in at bar come closing- you might as well. Sure you’ll regret it, but hey- it’s a right of passage! Besides, plucking the low hanging fruit is as American as John Cougar Mellencamp and Mc apple pie.

You like glitter, you like that autopilot headspace, you like Wall Drug.

Best place to get back to:

Route 203 off I-90, Washington
North Bend to Monroe (30 Miles)

The next time I’m traversing Western Washington’s I-90 with a bicycle strapped to my car, if I’ve got a passenger to spare; here is the junction where I pull over, run a Chinese fire drill, unlash my lonesome steel horse, and make for the Northwestern farmlands that are both easy on the eyes and light on the legs.

North Bend
Only a scratch off the Interstate, North Bend marks the beginning this route of backroadsing which meanders between the foothills of Washington’s Southern Cascades and the lush green pasture lands of it’s first valleys East of Seattle. By the time I realized I was off the freeway, North Bend was gone.

Snoqualmie
Had I not been busting the 10 mph I would have taken a glance at the trove of understated mom and popshops that edge up against this flower trimmed Main Street. At the far end of town nearly mile of weather beaten steam-engine locomotives sleep back to front. Undoubtedly a photographers play set, this rusting museum would fascinate even the casual historian or engineer.
A sweeping 12% grade drops you out of town and down in the valley below. From a 15-passenger van, the entire thrill is absorbed by the coosh of a captain’s seat. Dairy farms and fields of melon, strawberry, and front lawn market places abound.

Carnation
Carnation could have a main street parade every day and a farmers market every evening and I wouldn’t be surprised. Norman Rockwell may be cryogenicly frozen in the town hall that too would not surprise me. What did take me aback what that Carnation has quite possibly the finest Mexican food restaurant in the state of Washington. Well, I don’t actually know this, but with Mexican food- unlike Pizza parlors or Chinese food, you can sence it from down the street. Also, a killer place to get a Porsche.

Duvall
Lots’ a skinheads & churches in Duvall. I’d keep riding.

Monroe
By the time you’ve arrived in Monroe, you’re back to Anyplace, USA. Remember that the magic was not the destination but that space between the rolling green pastures and an abandoned route over a lonesome wooden bridge.

Every reason I could love I-90 West

1. For the Native American on the Crow reservation with a lip of sunflower seeds and a eagle feather fluttering from the rearview mirror of his battered brown on white Cadillac.
2. For the ghost houses, gutted RV parks, rusting grain silos, rotting cattle gates, folded rooftops of depression era farm houses, the unsteady hands that vandalize the husks of arcades, restaurants, schools, and auto dealerships.
3. For the perfect alchemy of a forlorn soundtrack from The Westerlies and the sunset breaching a thundershower over fields of mustard.
4. The Long Range RV that craws along the Continental Divide like a ten wheeled geriatric home.
5. The prayers to end abortion, unite church and state, re-elect the president (again).
6. The way the planes of South Dakota suddenly give way to the black hills and you don’t scratch another flat surface until the Pacific Ocean.
7. The Missouri and Yellowstone rivers.
8. The legendary 10,000 Silver Dollar Bar.
9. How the planes of Eastern Washington surrender to ancient tributaries of the Colombia River and on to those precious glazed evergreen Cascades.
10. Rocking Dio though the rush hours of Seattle.