BC wine?

We're in Vancouver getting ready to head out--already--to BC wine country for a couple of days. Much vin to be had!

And much blogging to catch up on...

paradiso

I have much of which to write for the past two days, but little battery power with which to do it. M just called me a dork for sitting in the car with the engine running so I could have the power to write this little bit. She softened the blow by saying I'm a cute dork, a lie I'll for which I'll forgive her.

We ended up spending two nights at Valley of the Rogue State Park, a park the state should be ashamed of. The proximity of tractor-trailers to the park belies the idyllic sounding title, but the awesome showers and wireless made up for it. The showers weren't locker room style; there were stalls that had partitions with two shelves and a place to sit. I wore shoes to avoid walking in any of the body-funk that may slough off of people who use them.

Rogue River City

The city of Rogue River would be more appropriately called a village. It has all of the amenities that a village needs—barber shop, grocery store, pharmacy, real estate office, bank, and a couple of eateries—with none of the accoutrements that would make anyone call it a city or even a town. Oregon has surprised me by being less cosmopolitan than I had imagined and much more hillbilly—for lack of a kinder term—than expected. On Friday morning I got my hair cut at Ron's barbershop, open at 7:30. Ron was a stocky guy with closely trimmed hair, glasses, a handlebar moustache, and Republican allegiances. I struck up a conversation with him about something, and within minutes he came out with "The environmentalists have ruined Oregon." Not willing to get into an argument with a razor-wielding man, I asked him what he meant without agreeing. He was a fourth generation logger who had to find work after laws were passed because of environmentalists which limited the amount of logging that could be done. He wasn't speaking economically, though; in his mind, trees are like crops which must be harvested when they get old so that new ones can grow. It took great control not to ask how in the world the forests had survived before we wonderful humans came along to tend them. Apparently the forests have been hit by several funguses and forest fires in recent years, and Ron believes that thinning the forests would help limit the damage to the trees—irony alert—by cutting them down. We moved on from the environmentalists to the general climate of Oregon. The night before there had been a 30-degree temperature swing, something he said is common on the Rogue Valley. There are more than a dozen wineries in the valley—this is something I learned elsewhere; Ron didn't strike me as the oenophile type—and it would be interesting to learn more about how the temperature swings affect their harvest and grow time. One last story about Ron: he used to go fishing down in some creeks that empty into the Illinois, and we were talking about the proliferation of anglers in the area and how little joy there is in fishing in great company. He said that when he had fished, "If you saw another guy, one of you was leaving. I had my shotgun with me, and I knew he did to, just because." I tipped well.

If Ron's story doesn't convey the aura of Rogue River well enough, perhaps the tale of the fishing license will. It's not an adventure; it's just funny. So I had to go to the local pharmacy to get my fishing license, once again dealing with a handlebar moustache and a shirt that said "The trout, the whole trout, and nothing but the trout, so help you cod." He was a little less helpful and welcoming, but I got a 3-day license and a little license holder. Are you ready for it? The holder is camouflaged, and in bright white letters it says "Rogue River Guns and Drugs." You know the Rx symbol? The x is two rifles crossed. I'm keeping this forever.

We spent the rest of the day driving around looking for places for me to fish along the Rogue and deciding it's too big and swift to fish easily, so we just hiked around, played cards, and read. I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, an easy read that is depressing as can be but fantastically engaging and haunting. The nameless protagonists work their way to the coast through a post-apocalyptic world, giving McCarthy the opportunity to insert little adventures at the same time he delves into the human spirit. Here's a bit I particularly liked:

"Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp."

I flew through the book and finished it in about 4 hours, something I hadn't done in a while. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is boring the hell out of me, and I don't think I'm going to return to it. It's too much diary and too little insight. She is an immensely talented word-artist—I find myself sitting by rivers looking for the words that she would use—but thematically boring to me.

We had a very pleasant evening drinking Deschutes Brewery's "Black Butte Porter," a coffee-like beer made with crystal and chocolate malts. Since we've missed the wineries in the area, we're just going to stop at gas stations and buy the local brews instead. Cheaper.

Oregon Gas

You can't fill your own gas tank in Oregon. The first time I pulled up to the money-sucking box, a fellow walked up to the window and looked at me expectantly. I just sat there staring at him then looked around for the "Full Service" sign and finally asked, stupidly, "Is this full service?" He was nice enough to explain that all of Oregon is. Since I'd already made an ass of myself, I decided it wouldn't hurt to ask him if tipping is expected. Of course it is.

Rogue River

Saturday morning began at 4 o'clock for me when my alarm went off. I'd woken up at 2:30 with the horrible feeling of having slept too long—there's an odd notion; too much sleep—but was able to go back to sleep fairly easily. I was to meet Matt Shore, my guide, at 4:45 at a Pilot station about 15 minutes down the road. The easiest thing would have been for me to follow him to where the boat would dock after the trip, but we weren't going to be done until 2 and had to be out of the campsite at 1. M, gracious and wonderful person that she is, drove me to meet Matt and then picked me up at 2, packing up all our stuff by herself.

Matt was in his mid-thirties, very personable, and an outdoorsman. I had originally thought I was the only one going, but we picked up Paul, a middle-aged insurance lawyer from Indianapolis who was used to fishing for bass and crappie. We drove about 10 miles up the river from where we would come out of the water and put in Matt's drift boat. I had no idea what a drift boat was, and I won't begin to fumble through a description of it using the few words I know about boats. The way it works to fish from it is that one person sits in the back with the prow pointed downstream and rows upstream. You don't actually move upstream; you just move at a slower pace than the water so that your lures or flies get the required action as you fish in front of the boat. Matt had a hellofa workout. We each fished with three poles—not simultaneously—depending on what kind of water we were in. The Rogue has a lot of riffles and some class 3 rapids in the section we were in, so we were fishing primarily for salmon and steelhead, though we were too early for either to be in great quantities. We used a fly rod with two nymphs on sinking-tip line for the shallower spots in hopes of steelhead; we used regular rods with plugs—I have no idea what that is—with treble hooks for steelhead in slightly deeper pools; and we used sardine wraps on spey rods for salmon in deep, swift pools. What's a sardine wrap, you ask? I asked too. On the Sacramento River in NorCal, fishermen found that salmon would strike at a flatfish lure—the length of your hand and the width of two fingers with two sets of treble hooks at either end—with a piece of sardine attached to it. Matt pulled out some thread, a jar of sardine filet, and cut it so that it fit around the base of one of the hooks and wrapped it tightly using the thread. The line on that rod was 20-lb., huge considering that most of what I use in Pennsylvania and Kentucky is 3-lb. Fishing those was the most exhausting fishing I've done because the current was pulling so hard that I had to wedge the base of the rod against my body to keep it from flying out of my hands. I can't imagine what it would have felt like to have a salmon on there. Did I give it away.

I caught no steelhead or salmon. Well, technically I caught steelhead, but they were smolt, steelhead that haven't gone to the ocean and are between 4 and 6 inches long. I also caught a 6-inch cutthroat trout, a beautiful animal that I was able to release without hurting him much. I hated that we were using treble hooks because they have barbs on them and ravage a fishes' mouth cruelly. I was unhappy about that. Actually, I was quite disappointed at not catching anything and having to pay—and tip!—for it. I've decided that I don't like tipping. I like prices that are cut and dry, tip included.

Anyway, we were on the river for 8 ½ hours, and my arms are toasted. I've never had my arms as sunburnt as they were after that, and in funny ways too. My bracelets left a line, and my ¾ -length sleeves left a definite line, too. In the morning we saw a river otter with a fish in its mouth, and alter we saw an osprey circling and diving toward the water, trying to catch a fish. The beauty of the river was almost enough to make me not regret the money paid. Almost.

Any time I'm rowing on a river or lake, I find myself mesmerized by a little phenomenon that holds no visual draw whatsoever but pulls my eye each time. As the oar pushes through the water, it creates a little whirlpool of bubbles that gets carried away or left behind and quickly disappears. These little storms that pass so instantly fascinate me, and I love watching them twirl through the water, dissipating within moments of their birth. The bubbles are the first things that rise to the surface—I'm wanting to use a word to describe the currents, but the word is on the edge and won't come to me; it's somewhere on here from months ago, and it means a rising wind. The real beauty is the cyclone of water. The tail whips back and forth under the water, growing shorter and shorter until it meets the surface and dies. The life cycle of these storms is so predictable, yet each one moves uniquely, raging in its own idiom.

North Umpqua

When we pulled in at 2 o'clock, we drove to the North Umpqua river, but that will have to wait for another post. It truly is paradise.

millie

"Hi, I'm Millie the dingy Avon Lady. When you hear a ding dong it's Avon!" -- Older woman outside the homely grocery store we just visited.

I'm off at 4:45 tomorrow morning with Matt Shore. I'm excited to learn new things!

Sitting here…

I'm sitting in the car with it running, charging the phone and the computer. We've had to move our tent twice this morning because we were in the "buffer" spot and someone had another reserved. It was funny to just take out the stakes and poles, fold up our bags inside the tent, and stuff the tent in the back seat. At least it was funny the first time.

Tomorrow morning I'm going with a guide down the Upper Rogue River fishing for steelhead. This river is big and scary, and I'm doing it by boat.

By the way, I'm never letting anyone give me crap about Kentucky rednecks or hillbillies ever again. They're everywhere! I got a haircut this morning from a friendly but scary guy with a handlebar moustache then bought a fishing license from an unfriendly guy with a handlebar moustache. Be afraid!

me in yosemite

summer 1453
Originally uploaded by dwain.

sitting atop our campsite

On our own

NPR just mentioned a "suicide truck bomb" in Iraq, as if the very automobiles have risen up in protest and outrage.

Today is the summer solstice, and it's hot. In the northern hemisphere we celebrate the longest day and the hottest weather, while in the southern hemisphere they huddle in hopes for a warm morning that seems like it will never come. In Bolivia, last night was the night of San Juan, a night of bonfires in the street and fireworks all night long that lead to a hazy morning that isn't nearly as beautiful as it should be. I remember one San Juan when our family had a large group of people in our home and a bonfire on the sidewalk; yours truly decided it would be fun to throw some Black Cat-equivalents into the bonfire to see if they would go off. They didn't immediately ignite, and I quickly forgot about them. Until I jumped over the fire and they went off under me. The fire was in serious danger of being put out as I nearly wet myself in midair.

We had a lazy morning at Eric's house drinking coffee and reading the paper. It hurt me to see the local fishing conditions and not be out, but we're heading to Oregon today to see what we can see. I've been waking up early—5:30 this morning—and decided to use the time this morning to blog a bit and catch up on some of what we've been doing. I noticed that I've been ripping on California quite a bit, and I need to clarify that it's the geography, not the people, that bothers me. The people have been wonderful and are possessed of a vibe that I've enjoyed more the further we travel. Cities are generally unfriendly, but we had several encounters with neat people in San Francisco, and Jamestown was friendly, too, if a little backcountry. Before we got in the car this morning, we went shopping for our lunch foods for our next few days at Bel-Air, the Kroger of Sacramento. It was a great place—a grocery store with wine tastings!—and the staff was incredibly friendly, gushing about how cute M's short hair is and how my ears are normal—bless them! Some of you may know that as a rule I dislike humans, but I've encountered a few this trip who pass my test of decency.

At 6:30 this morning I got a call from my dear friend announcing that he and his wife are expecting a baby! It was a complete surprise to them but not an unpleasant one, so I'm happy for them. Just not for me because it means we'll be hanging out less. That's my major complaint with kids and my reason for championing dogs. Of course, Maxx probably won't be changing my geriatric diapers, so I can see some benefits to miniature-humans.

Out my window I can see the Sierra Nevadas looming through the haze. I think I can even make out a little snow on the summit! I'm ecstatic about getting into Oregon and the northern forests; there's a stark beauty to the Southwest, but my heart lies in the mountains and forests. Ironically the only forests I spent any time in in Bolivia were the eucalyptus groves that were transplanted from Australia. I hadn't seen a eucalyptus tree since being in Bolivia two years ago, but they're everywhere out here! My mom used to go outside and break off a branch and boil the leaves, a smell that filled the home and has stuck with me for years.

For every two radio stations in English, there's one in Spanish. No, not just Spanish: Mexican. Mariachi, reggaeton, cumbia, duranguense: they all drive me crazy despite having grown up with similar music. What's funny to me is that they consider it to be a "traditional" style of music even though only the percussion instruments are actually indigenous to the continent. That doesn't mean it's not traditional; it just shortens the history of the tradition. I don't point that out to my students, though. They have surprised me by listening to their "own" music more than American music because I, for some reason, thought the whole world listened to rock and pop and hip-hop. With them, though, it's all duranguense and reggaeton and cumbia. They don't even listen to "rock en español" like Maná or Los Aterciopelados. I think one reason for this is that the kind of people who immigrate up into KY from Mexico are the working class, the people who we would call "rednecks." They're the country-folk of Mexico and listen to the country music of Mexico.

The thought occurs to me that these agro families are the traditional social foundation of Mexican culture, the people who preserve the culture of the past by living it presently. Is that culture being lost as they slowly—or quickly—are migrating into the US? I know that they're bringing their culture with them, but the dominant culture will influence the subordinate culture no matter how quickly the latter grows. I would say, actually, that it's a sign of the dominance of US culture that so many people are moving here, abandoning what they see as an economically futureless nation. It's the importance of money that draws people here, capitalism reforming national ethnicities. What effect is that having on traditional Mexico? What effect will it have on US culture as a whole, not just in border areas? It also makes me wonder about the traditional social foundation of the US, or at least what we often consider the base. When I think of traditional Americans, I think the South and Midwest. The coasts and cities in general represent social progressivism while small towns in the "bread basket" and Bible belt represent bastions of morality. We've certainly been hearing a lot about this in recent years—think Xian Coalition, Focus on the Family—though it's been present for well over a century in America's self-perception. As small towns dwindle and cities grow, are we losing that social foundation, or was it ever actually the foundation? Are cities the true foundation upon which the country is built and towns are collections of primitive—hyperbole—people? These are all questions being asked around the nation by both sides—if there are sides—that have easy answers depending upon which frame of reference you use: traditional or progressive. The very word "traditional" implies the past and culture, yet the word is used disparagingly in many "progressive" circles. Last question: many progressives in the US fight for the preservation of cultures around the world in the face of globalization, yet they also fight the traditionalism of the US, a paradox I don't fully understand. I agree with them completely, but I can't defend the glaring contradiction. Strange thoughts.

A bi-plane cropduster just flew over us.

Apparently I don't have enough nose hair because I just noticed a hair in my moustache that's growing up into my nose!

Enough writing for now. We need to find an auto place and have our brakes checked; they've been shaking as we go down hills, not a good sign considering the foothills we've been exploring before hitting the big stuff of the Northwest.

Notice we've dropped the photos of cool trucks? That's because there aren't any out here!

11:47 – M just spotted the first snowcapped peak of the trip! My best guess it that it's North Fork Mountain. Our map of Northern California and the Bay Area is getting worn and is starting to rip out of the atlas because it's been in use for so many days. It's a good thing we're leaving, otherwise we'd be lost in this wilderness. Actually, from what I'm seeing up here, I wouldn't mind getting lost in the Redding area. Just head for the hills!

10:30 PM – This is funny: I'm sitting on the concrete slab of an RV pull-in at Valley of the Rogue State Park in Rogue River, Oregon. There's an electrical outlet next to the slab and the whole place is a wifi hotspot, so I'm having a blast. About two hundred yards from me is the Rogue River, one of the finest salmon and steelhead rivers in the US, and I have little to no intention of fishing it because I have no clue what I'm doing and there are several hundred people in this damned park right now. Oh, and bugs are congregating around the holy glow of the laptop screen, so this may be short and unsweet.

Here are some phrases I typed as we drove from Redding, CA up to here:

The northwest is conical

Trees so old they've gone senile. I can't begin to express in a new way the wonder they inspire.

We are living in Eureka

Standing, staring up at the tops of trees, I grew dizzy

Trinity River at Douglas City

Of course they make no sense, but I will return to them. I just don't know when.

For those of you who have commented or emailed, thanks so much! I'm sorry I'm not emailing or commenting back, but the wifi has been so sporadic that I spend most of the time rushing about trying to look up maps and post blogs and things to actually do any personal communication. Thanks, though! Yes, Wendie, I feel bad for leaving the poodle, but he'd have been miserable after 4200 miles and 12 states! Laura, I'm trying to let it flow, but it's hard to recapture emotions 3 days later.

Slowly moving north

We decided last night that we would get up early and do a hike this morning. When our alarm went off at 5 this morning, that plan went the way of the dodo. I think long days and short nights finally caught up. It also didn't help that last night was our first night in the woods, and it usually takes a couple of nights for your body to reconnect with the earth despite your attempts to limit that with a Thermarest. It dropped down into the 40s last night, a blessed relief from the heat of the day. A nearby meadow made for a fun hour of nighttime photography and scaring the begesus out of M.

Sleeping in a tent is an interesting affair for those best accustomed to the comfort of walls and a roof. The fabric offers only the slightest protection from the elements, and it only slightly limits the senses: you still smell the wood smoke and pine; you hear the drunken campers and the bird greeting the light; you feel the hard ground grinding into you as you desperately try to make of it a comfortable bed; you see the shadows of trees wave on the fabric, backlit by the crescent moon and smattering of stars; and you taste, sometimes, the little particles of soil that will themselves into your tent. I always wondered why people with dirt floors swept them, but I understand now the compulsion to clear away the reminder of inevitability and fruitlessness. I usually sleep quite well in a tent, though I despise doing so when I know there are strangers in a tent 20 feet away. I'm quite private about being outside, like I have a particular right of ownership over this experience and this place and this time.

Sleeping on the ground is a greater challenge than sleeping in a tent. As I said, it takes me at least one night to return to the earth. I usually sleep on my stomach, but doing that on the ground isn't nearly as comfortable, nor is lying on your side. Apart from finding that comfort, there's also the struggle of finding a comfortable way to sleep in the cocoon of a mummy bag, a morose name. I learned years ago that to fully utilize the warming properties of a mummy bag, you must sleep in the nude or as close to it as your sensibilities will allow. My own sensibilities stop with my underwear, so last night found me zipping the bag up to the hood and drawing the string tight around my shivering shoulders. It didn't take long to warm up, and I slept wonderfully most of the night. M, on the other hand, wore pants, socks, a thermal top, a goose down vest, and froze. Of course, if I had had to get up in the night to answer the call, a late night squirrel might have wondered why the white ghost was relieving himself right outside the tent and shivering so madly. That campsite is probably the highest we'll be in at 7200 ft. above sea level, but I suspect that there will be many more cold nights as we continue to go north.

Before I forget, I must share a tagline that M came up with for Yosemite after an encounter on Glacier Point: "Yosemite Park: where the squirrels are all fat and friendly." They had no fear! One bastard tourist kept shooing them away when they approached his family who were sitting eating lunch and kept going on about how they were nothing but rats. I hate tourists. I am one…

We broke camp—I love the phrase—and left at about 8:30, wending our way down the mountain to the tourist-infested valley. There weren't as many cars lining the roads as there were the day before, so we took the opportunity to stop and take pictures of the gorgeous river that flows through the valley and of El Capitan, an enormous tombstone of granite that towers over the valley much more impressively than Half-dome. Yosemite is surrounded by giant stones, and I kept trying to come up with a clever personification phrase, but the clichéd "slumbering giants" kept getting in the way. The only variation I could muster was "dozing titans," but that doesn't ring quite as powerfully.

As I was walking along the river—for the oh-so-beautiful purpose of finding an out of sight tree—I saw a man kneeling on the bank with a Mac and a tripod with an incredible camera panning on a tripod. I had to stop and ask him about it, and he told me he was taking a 370 degree photo of the valley that could be printed at about 34" high. I turned green.

We returned to Jamestown and spent a couple of hours there making pique macho, a Bolivian meal, and washing clothes. I didn't bring enough shirts. Worst of all, I tried to trim my hair with a friend's clippers, but they were dull and gave me tiny little Mohawks all down my head—the computer capitalized "Mohawks" for me, twice!

The road from Jamestown to Sacramento is ugly and crowded, but I'm beginning to realize that this is true for much of California. It's a state that's brimming with people, and I cannot begin to imagine why. For me to want to live in a place, the place must have some kind of geographic draw, and I haven't been able to turn my mind to the mentality that finds heat and flat beautiful. M's cousin and fiancé-friend, Eric and Sarah, are being gracious enough to let us stay with them. They have a lovely home on a lake north of Sacramento proper and a personable little dog who just makes us miss Maxx all the more. This evening we sat outside and ate turkey burgers and talked all of the taboo topics: family, religion, politics. Fortunately we tend to agree on most of the topics, so we all get to revel in the party of righteous indignation against all those who are too obtuse to see how asinine their actions and beliefs are. M's family, especially her grandparents, loom large over the family, and it's astounding how often they are the topic of conversation, for better or worse. Eric has had a rough experience being the "black sheep" grandchild of the family, and it was frustrating hearing how hurtful that has been and continues to be, for both he and Sarah. It was a lovely evening of conversation, and I look forward to the next time we're able to visit with them.

Yosemite Falling

I'm sitting atop a rock at site 48 of Bridalveil Creek Campsite in Yosemite Nat'l Park. There's a cool breeze blowing, sweet respite from the near-90 that it's been most of the day, something I wasn't prepared for at this altitude and in such mountainous terrain. I'm hoping it gets cold tonight because I'm tired of the heat. San Francisco was quite cool—it was down into the 50s—and Monterey was downright cold, but those have been the only oases on our trip.

We left our friends in Sonora this morning and headed up here. It was a productive morning, really; I learned how to change a fuse in a car and I got an oil change. Our power outlet in the car had given out and I was getting a little tired of the same old CDs and was worried about how I would blog and ride. I've been really slack about blogging the past few days, not because there hasn't been anything to say or that I'm not motivated, but the days have been brimming over into insanity. My average of 6 hours of sleep and 10 hour drives is catching up, but I won't let it exhaust me until I get back to Lexington!

I was excited about Yosemite until I drove into the valley. I have never seen so many people crammed into one place for the sole purpose of viewing nature. The irony is that we call it "nature" even though it's populated by enough people to warrant calling it Yosemite City—say that 3 times fast. I couldn't enjoy the intimidation of El Capitan or imagine being a drop of water falling over Yosemite Falls because I had to watch the road to make sure I wasn't running over any of the hundreds of people who lined the road. They were like people watching a car wreck, only they were all oohing and aahing as if they loved it, but they were driving Hummers and RVs. It ruined the entire valley for me.

Leaving Yosemite Valley was a relief, and we drove way up a mountain to this campsite which is full but not crazily like below. We're fairly isolated here. We just chopped a bunch of firewood and will start a fire once it's not so damnably hot. We also went to Glacier Point, an overlook of Yosemite Valley which was quite relaxing to walk about. It's definitely a beautiful place, and the rocks are the largest I've ever seen—El Capitan is the largest hunk of granite in the world. Speaking of large things, yesterday we saw a 44-lb. piece of gold at Ironstone Winery. We sampled several wineries in Sonora and Murphy yesterday with our friends, and we had fish tacos for the first time. They also prepared silpancho for us, a Bolivian meal that we were privileged—blessed!—enough to have twice this week. Oh, and we also walked around Columbia, and old mining town that was going to be the capitol—capital?—of California until Sacramento stole it. Columbia has been set up as a recreated mining town, and it had a lot of really cool buildings like the Masonic lodge, the dentist's office—I had to leave at the sight of the foot-powered drill and the wrench extractors—the butcher shop, hotel, saloon, and several other old buildings. What a life they lived.

A little while ago we stopped by Bridalveil Creek and had some food and waded a bit. It was gorgeous. I would've stayed longer, but I'm not a bear unless I absolutely have to, and there was a washroom 5 minutes away. That was an adventure itself; some poor fellow was having a spiritual experience in there, and I decided to wait until he found peace before I went in.

Not much has happened today, despite our beautiful surroundings. The beauty was so soured for me by the presence of humans—says the human—that I think I would have to come back in the off-season—"humanless season"—to fully enjoy it. I'm going to go make some instant mashed potatoes and enjoy our first
actual camping during this trip! This is the inaugural night because after this we have about 3 weeks of it. I'm excited!

June 17th

San Francisco was fun to leave behind on a Sunday morning. Traffic was minimal—which means it was heavy—and we got to see the Golden Gate Bridge quickly and quietly. Our final destination was Jamestown, a small town about an hour east of Yosemite. Of course we couldn't do the drive without a "jaunt!"

One of my favorite wines—top 3—is Erik's the Red, a blend put out by Toad Hollow. I've written about it before and won't expound on that anymore here. Our hotel in SF had wireless so I checked to see how close the winery was. Thor be praised, it was only an hour and a half away! It's funny how time and distances become relative after 3000 miles; an hour and a half is a hop, skip, and a jump! The tasting room is in Healdsburg, north of San Francisco in the Russian River Valley, one of my favorite wine-producing regions, more than Napa, a fine but pompous region. Anyway, we headed up toward this little town and drove through a precious "downtown" and parked right down the street from Toad Hollow. It's silly to be exciting over something as small as this, but I was. An interesting thing about tasting rooms in California that's good to know in advance: free tastings and anything they have. We're used to KY and IN where you have to pay for a few tastes. Beware, traveler: not so in CA.

Toad Hollow is owned by Robin Williams' step-brother—who happens to be from Versailles, KY!—and takes its name from his childhood nickname. It was a small tasting room with two people working, and M and I were half of the customers. Kid in a candy store. Of course we sampled every single one of their wines on the list and were blown away that we were allowed to. To steal a brilliant phrase from Craig, we were "Country mice in the city." That's my phrase for the trip. The woman pouring for us was hesitantly nice at first, but we started telling her about our trip and talking to the other gentleman—Jim—behind the counter and the other two tasters and were soon trading stories and having a blast. They recommended a couple of other wineries in the downtown and told us about the area, and we talked to Jim about bourbons, something he loves. They were the nicest people! They gave us several wine labels and a bag of corks, and we bought several bottles of wine and a signed print of the Erik's the Red label. We left our purchases there and went on to Thumbprint Winery where we tasted and gabbed with some people from San Francisco—who then went to Toad Hollow and talked good about us, woo-hoo—and ordered some wine to be shipped to us in KY. Not sure how that will work because of KY's rules about that, but we're going to try anyway. After a quick bite to eat—seared ahi with soy-truffle sauce and mango-mustard marinated chicken with parsley and pine nuts—we went back to Toad to pick up our things. We brought several bottles of fine bourbon to leave as gifts, and we decided to leave one with Jim. He was shocked—Kentuckians are nice?—and kindly and unnecessarily gifted us a bottle of wine. Oh, and he also took my picture wearing the Erik's the Red Viking helmet! I hope he sends me the picture to include in our Xmas newsletter!

We arrived in Jamestown late but in wonderful moods. M was supposed to make the drive, but wine makes her sleepy, so yours truly blinked his way through it. It was great to see Nate and meet Heidi and 4-month-old Renner. Nate was a classmate of M's in Bolivia, and I interacted with him a bit when I revisited Bolivia after I graduated. He was in the car with me when I hit a mother and child on the Prado in Cochabamba. Yech. Heidi is a sweetheart who welcomed us wholly into their cozy home, and Renner is a bubbly, smiley baby who is cute as can be.

**This is all in the past tense because I'm writing it 3 days after the fact.

2 full days

Two days on the road are more than I've been able to keep up with, so I've just been jotting down notes about the interesting or odd things we've seen. This will be short and disjointed.

Thursday we left Santa Fe in the morning and headed for Las Vegas. We originally were going to drive through Las Vegas as car-tourists and continue on to Death Valley for the night. That plan changed for some reason—who knows how—and we reserved a room at the Sahara on the Strip. Yesterday's drive was supposed to be 9 hours, but we added a couple of jaunts—sounds much better than 'detours'—that got us into LV at around 7 PST.

The first jaunt was a three hour affair which was entirely worth the extra time it added. We were driving through Flagstaff—a gorgeous city, by the way—and decided to make the trip up to the Grand Canyon to see the new "sky walk" built by the Hualupai (sp?) tribe. Of course, it's 100 miles away and costs $80 (thanks for looking that up for us, Jake! Cell phones rule!). We enjoyed it anyway, despite the 113 degree day. If I had ever been there, I couldn't remember it. Breathtaking. It's amazing to happen upon this rift that extends back beyond the memory of humans, beyond our comprehension of time. We say millions of years, but we don't understand the concept. Our frame stops at a lifetime—less, even, because we're always saying "that doesn't seem like it was that long ago" and are surprised at how quickly or slowly time passes. I overheard a little kid say the canyon "looks really weird without your sunglasses on!"

"An Ode to the Grand Canyon"

The hot wind roiling over the rim,
A bird diving through
The gusts, the haze of blues, greys, and reds,
So far away they seem like the backdrop
Of a Leone film.
The scent of juniper and pine overwhelms,
Overwhelmed itself only by the scent of
Cheap perfume on the lady who walks by
In heels, pink shirt. Pink with no haze.
Sunscreen wafts and protects us from the sun.
People push to the edge, inching closer to
The deep, danger, no intention of falling
So they're really just toying with the Grand's
Emotions: they won't really feed her.
I stay away out of respect, out of fear,
Like the ocean. I won't go into water over my
Waist because once you've given yourself
That far, you belong to the ocean and are just
Waiting for her to collect.

Our next "jaunt" was really on the way but required a stop: Hoover Dam. It was 113 there as well and quite crowded. The most beautiful thing about it wasn't the dam but the bright blue water. That's enough said about that.

We arrived in Vegas in the early evening and checked in at the Sahara, an enormous mistake. We decided to walk down the strip and see what we could see, and that's when it became obvious that the Sahara was a sucky place to be. Did you know the strip is about 3 miles long? We didn't. The Sahara was a perfectly nice place, but it was at the faaaaar end of the strip, and it was a 2 mile walk down to the Bellagio and Caesar's Palace. There are a lot of things to say about Vegas, but I don't want to spend the time on it. It was strange, it was depressing, it was a long, freaking walk. Decadence, excess, and far too much money. I see why Stephen King made Vegas the devil's headquarters in The Stand.

We left Vegas at the buttcrack of dawn and headed to San Francisco. The only thing we had planned was driving through Death Valley, the most aptly named place on Earth. Again, not much to say about it because we stayed in the car the whole time and just drove. It was 107 at 8:30 in the morning. We did get buzzed by an F-18 as we came out of the valley which freaked the poo out of me. The drive there was pretty strenuous on our car as we drove down to 282 below sea level then to 5000 above then back down to 0 then back up to 5000. Our mileage wasn't so hot… Just before we reached that actually valley we saw a sign to Dante's View leading off to the left and up into the hills. It was a 13 mile drive, but I couldn't pass up anything involving Dante, so we made the incredibly windy and steep (15% grade) drive. Dante's description of the inferno he peered down into surpasses anything I could attempt, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Funniest thing: I have an FM tuner for my iPod, and when we got back into the car we found out that I happened to have it tuned to a Christian station! We were sitting on top of Dante's View staring into Death Valley listening to someone sing "Your grace is enough." Not in this place, it isn't.

Sequoia National Park was out of the way, but we did drive through the National Forest, specifically through Kern Canyon. One of the neat things we've experienced on this trip is deciding to take a back road and finding beautiful places. Kern River Canyon/Valley is one of the most terrifying roads I've been on in the US—please note the qualification—and one of the prettier rivers. It dropped us several thousand feet down a narrow canyon into Bakersfield, ironically one of the ugliest places I've ever seen. The river was rocky and full of falls, and it was extremely deep—"250 people dead" said the road sign—but was begging to be fished. M had a great description of the golden colored hills that surrounded us: "They look like worn velvet jackets."

Southern California is fairly ugly, despite what celebrities and Hispanic immigrants may think. We drove past thousands of acres of lettuce, artichokes, almond orchards, and of course grape vineyards, but it was hideously ugly and hot. Once we neared the coast it got better, especially after Paso Robles. I've mentioned a spiritual experience, but I'm still processing it.

In San Mateo—part of the Bay area—we found our hotel and called Craig, my dear friend and one-time roommate. We'd driven pretty hard and were tired, so we just sat in the room and sipped bourbon and caught up, a very pleasant evening. On Saturday we took the train down to San Francisco and a cab—crazy driver—to Pier 30-something. Freshly boiled crab at a stand made for a great lunch as we watched the Bushman of San Francisco work his funny magic (Google him). The North Beach chamber of commerce was having a festival, so we squeezed into the crowded park and made our way up to the front stage. The crowd was a fascinating study of people of all ages and walks of life. There was an Asian man dressed in a Matrix-like jacket with a weightlifting belt and leather boots who got up and danced karate-style. Several young girls who were dancing thought it was funny to go up behind him and dance with him. The second band we heard was a Rolling Stones cover band who looked like the Stones—tight pants and gold shirts—and had the crowd going wild.

After a while we decided to go find a bar, so we headed away from the beach and into Chinatown. All the bars in North Beach were packed with festival-goers, but we found this great little dive on the edge of Chinatown that had stools right by the window so we could watch the people walk past. Next to us were sitting an older man and woman who kept buying a beer and a cup of wine; he would pour a mouthful into the glass so that it was always at the same level. Both of them were dressed somewhat shabbily—especially her—in clothes that looked like they'd been owned for 30 years but had been cared for carefully, so perhaps "shabbily" should be "anciently."

At 7:30 we went to a restaurant that a friend had told us about, Peña Pachamama, billed as a "South American organic" restaurant. It is much more than that. Their menu is completely Bolivian, the décor is Bolivian, and it is amazing. Have you ever gone into something expecting it to be pleasant but it turns into something beautiful and delightful? After we ordered our food—and Bolivan beer!—I struck up a conversation with an American woman who worked there. This is where things started to amaze us. The woman was the co-owner of the restaurant with her husband, Eddy Navia. Eddy Navia was the premier charrango player in Bolivia in a group called Savia Andina, a group we both grew up listening to. The waitresses were from Cochabamba—where M grew up and I lived for two years—and one of them was an extremely accomplished dancer of Bolivian dances. Our food was certainly wonderful, but the most beautiful part of the evening was the show that ensued. Eddy and his wife, Quintan, and Isaac Lopez, a famous indigenous musician who played at the Greek Olympics, and Eddy and Quintan's son, Gabriel, put on a performance that was astounding. Eddy and Gabriel are phenomenal on their instruments, charrango and guitar, respectively. One song they did was a sort of "dueling" of the two instruments but intertwined toward the end and began to speed up until both of them were playing frantically but calmly, as if their hands and fingers weren't moving so fast we couldn't distinguish any form. One of the waitresses—the older sister, Isabela—put on traditional clothes and danced a traditional dance with Isaac then changed back into her clothes and danced and took care of tables and danced and taught others to dance and… She did it with so much enthusiasm that only a completely heartless and emotionally dead person would have been able to resist getting up and dancing when she asked. *ahem*

We ended staying for 3 hours, buying two CDs and a cookbook, and having a reason to return to SF.

Touring Santa Fe

I fell a little out of love with SF today. We're still involved in a subtle game of seduction, but today I peeked under her skirts and wasn't as smitten as I was with her clothes and her trappings. Don't get me wrong; she's a beautiful young thing—old thing, really—who wooed me quickly and passionately, and I still love her, only less passionately.

My relationship with "art towns" is fickle, vacillating between love and hate, admiration and disgust, envy and revulsion. Estes Park in Colorado is a beautiful town populated by artists and artisans who peddle their wares for thousands of dollars. Asheville, North Carolina is similarly dotted with galleries and museums. If art towns were a family, Santa Fe would be the hippie mother who prefers the company of women—I'm being told I need to insert the qualifier "in my opinion." That analogy isn't denigrating at all, or at least isn't intended to be. I love hippies, I love mothers, and I too prefer the company of women. Asheville would be the daughter who follows in her mother's footsteps and rebels against society on general principle. Estes Park would be the traditional son who wears turquoise and cowboy hats and stuffs animals.

[Blogging much later…]

So a crazy pair of days interrupted my thoughts, and I'm not sure they're worth returning to. I forget exactly where I was taking the family metaphor, so I'll drop it for now. Suffice it to say, Santa Fe is a beautiful town that thinks highly of itself.

artist

Here's a link to an online gallery of Alvaro Cardona-Hine, the artist we met in Truchas.

a moment to say...

We made it to San Francisco! I started writing a blog about it in the car, but our battery died and the fuse or something that works our cig lighter stopped working, so I didn't get much.

Our trip stands at 3200 miles (last time I checked), 1500 of those yesterday and today. We drove for about 15 hours today, including a couple of breaks.

The sunset over SF (not Santa Fe) was beautiful, though we didn't see all of it. An enormous bank of clouds is hanging around the peninsula (how I think of this), a beautiful sight.

I had a pseudo-spiritual experience this evening. Sometimes an experience leaves you breathless and, in this case, incapable of expressing how profoundly it has impacted you. We visited Carmel Point (Carmel-by-the-Sea) on a whim and haven't been able to express what it did to us.

I wanted to "save" this phrase for when I was writing about it more fully, but that seems too contrived, now: Today I found the wild god of the world that Jeffers worshipped.

pics

By the way, there are a few pictures uploaded to Flickr. Check out the sets on the side. I'm having a hard time mass-uploading, so until then it'll be in small batches.

Border's

We're sitting in a Border's bookstore catching up on a while of stuff. We spent the entire morning walking around downtown Santa Fe and checking out a fraction of the endless and ultimately un-unique art galleries. The prices are exorbitant and exemplify the hubris I sense in the area. There are a couple of churches, though, that are just fantastic to see, including the oldest church in the US.

We're paying $6 to use this connection for an hour, so I'm going to do better things with my time like find a hotel room in Vegas and plan our hike to Half Dome Peak.

Santa Fe and the Moses Bird

I woke up at 4:30 this morning. One of the curses of quick travel is that your body doesn't have time to catch up, as if you leave it behind and only reincorporate days later after a magical encounter during the night. I lay in bed for a while then got up and played chess and looked through pictures. The latter was more profitable because I upped the chess level and was soundly beaten half a dozen times.

We're staying with M's aunt, the eldest of the siblings and by far my favorite. I have a hard time reconciling the fact that she and my mother-in-law are related, and in fact I often forget the fact entirely.

Before I go any further, I need to insert something here. I've been feeling a lack of confidence in my writing recently, a hesitation and a struggle to write more and better things. Even now I'm struggling to articulate what happened today and what changed today. I still don't have any confidence, but I have a clearer direction of what kind of writer I am. Witness an example of one of life's cruel ironies: I don't enjoy reading nonfiction, but I only enjoy writing nonfiction. I came to the latter realization some years ago and have been trying to change the former to improve the latter over the last two years. I don't know what happened today, but I find myself feeling a little bit more comfortable about what I should write and, more importantly, how I should express myself. Style is not my strongest point, but I think I can develop that if I begin to focus more on content and let that dictate how I write. It sounds rather hackneyed, I know, like those artists who don't have a true understanding of their art and so say that "it just flows," a total copout.

Back to M's aunt. She's the black sheep of the family, meaning she doesn't find all the answers in Xianity, is a feminist, a free-thinker, and lives outside the comfort circle of her parents and siblings. She's extremely well-read in spiritual matters, mysteries, and social matters as well. Basically, Santa Fe is where she belongs.

This morning, after several hours of chess and reading, we came upstairs and sat around for a while with her talking family, faith, fundamentalism, social activism, etc. After about an hour we went to Cloud Cliffs, a restaurant owned by a German Buddhist whose menu is entirely organic and delicious. I had a grilled polenta with home fries and two eggs. The conversation continued there. We had a fascinating conversation about the Bible as literature and how many people have come to worship it rather than its message. I recently was in a conversation with a colleague—who is my age and also educated in English literature—regarding global warming in which he said that he didn't believe it was occurring "because it's not mentioned in Revelations." If this colleague is standing around waiting for the whore of Babylon to make the beast with two backs with a dragon (I think that's the event), I have some disappointing news for him.

After breakfast we drove to Chimayó, a small pueblo about 30 minutes from Santa Fe which is renowned for a small church with healing powers. I don't have any pictures of the interior because photography was prohibited, unfortunately. We arrived just as they were beginning their 11 o'clock mass, a small gathering of people who sang a hymn before beginning the liturgy. We were in a chapel next to the main church and could hear the service, and it was moving to think of the people whose voices I could hear hoping desperately that it wasn't in vain. In the small chapel there's a hole in the ground with the loose, red dirt of New Mexico and a small, red trowel which you can use to scoop it up. The soil has healing powers, and the chapel is chockablock full of crutches, face masks—like mesh hockey masks—pictures of soldiers and children, and scores of virgins and Christs, all testaments to the lives which have been touched by the soil. Outside the chapel is a stream and a fence which has hundreds of makeshift crosses—most often two twigs tied together—with scrawled messages and pictures shoved into the links. The hope and supplication of the messages is overshadowed by the desperation I can imagine in the fingers as they hold the two sticks together and tie a note to the rounded joining. Though it goes against everything I was ever taught, when I observe Xianity in practice, I only see hopelessness.

From Chimayó we meandered through Cundiyo to Truchas (trout), a small pueblo at 8,500 feet on the slopes of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. M's aunt, Andrea, knows several of the artists who have moved to the pueblo—probably about 300 total population—and have galleries there. We stopped at two galleries, one featuring an exhibit by Sheila Keefe, a fascinating artist whose works are prohibitively expensive or we would have one hanging in our house. The second gallery was owned by the artists, an older couple named Alvaro Cordona-Hine and Barbara McCauley (I'm not sure about Barbara's last name), who display their own art and that of a couple other artists. Alvaro is from Latin America and was the quintessential artist: beret, Zen Buddhist, and given to bons mots ("The reason to live is to be in the sun"). They were both incredibly friendly and gave us a private, and uncommon, tour of their private studios. Alvaro gave M a poster of one of his pieces, and she bought a piece that wasn't on display in the gallery but which she loved. It was one of a series of paintings he had done over the winter in Mexico which feature a bird in pastel colors and a comical title. My favorite was Moses Bird, a funny little bird holding a tablet of stone. I don't know much about Zen Buddhism—Buddhism in general, actually—but it was interesting to hear them talk about their Zen Master, a woman who passed away at some unspecified time in the past, and talk about their life beliefs.

We stopped at several places and took lots of pictures of the valley and mountains. There was a weave shop which has been in the Ortega family for 8 generations, each one chronicled. Katherine Ortega, the 8^th generation, was born the same year as me. There was Gabriel's, a Mexican restaurant with the best guacamole I've ever had.

We're back at Andrea's house sitting in her dining room/sitting area talking Santa Fe, economics, and landscaping. Her house is utterly beautiful. The houses out here have to be in a certain style, must be taken from a specific palette of colors, can't be more than two stories tall, and must be covered in stucco. It makes for a beautiful town that emerges from the landscape rather than hides it.

I'm pretty sure I want to move out here. Seriously.

Evening

We ate at Maria's, a Mexican restaurant for locals, not tourists, home of 100 different margaritas. They also had more than 100 kinds of tequila, a liquor I've never been particularly fond of, both because of the taste and memories of porcelain nights. I did try a "tequila flight," though, beginning with a 92-proof blanco followed by Purasangre Reposado and ending with the Purasangre Añejo. I don't know anything about what distinguishes each of those, but my least despised was the Reposado. It had a honeyed taste to it.

Sunset over Santa Fe is breathtaking. The skies light up in golds and pinks and mauves until you begin to think, as Andrea said, you're staring at a painted backdrop. There were a couple of people in the park we drove to to see the sunset taking pictures with their giant, fancy cameras (camera envy…). I didn't have mine with me, and I'm glad. In one of those moments of cosmic coincidence, the last paragraph I had read in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was about the difference between walking about with a camera and walking around with only your mind. When you take a camera, you're constantly on the lookout for that perfect moment and shot, but when you walk without a camera you are open to whatever moment that may happen upon you. I definitely know what she's saying, but I take such pleasure in capturing moments and ideas that I don't necessarily think of myself as being obtuse to the grander truth of the moment. Reality doesn't change only because I've happened to catch it in electronic pulses.

We're going to watch a few minutes of precious cable TV before we sleep. It's not even 9 out here. I feel so old.

M’s Birthday!

"Today's babies are born perfect. Parents, say no to circumcision." –Road sign two miles outside of Nevada, MO (pop. 8607)

We just left the nursing home where my grandmother is living—dying—and said goodbye to my grandfather. She didn't recognize me at all this morning, but that's okay; I have the brightening of her eyes on Friday.

We're headed straight for a storm in Oklahoma. I just took a picture of a cloud-dragon sweeping over the prairie.

Today is M'S BIRTHDAY! A very respectable 26, she is. How do we celebrate? Drive for 12 hours.

Afternoon

Okay, so that storm we were driving into hit us in Missouri. The highway we were going down was closed because of high water, and I mean some seriously high water. We had to turn around and try a couple of different routes before backtracking and sidetracking far enough to get around it. Then we drove in rain for 4 hours. What fun. We're now in Oklahoma, M is driving, and I'm resting my weary arse. Oklahoma is, despite what you may have heard, one of the most boring places in North America. We just drove by "the home of Garth Brooks" and some other legendary nobody. Tulsa and Oklahoma City were little more than stains of concrete on a bumpy landscape.

I started reading Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek last night. I've owned the book for a couple of years and had started in on it sometime during that but left it behind. I can't say I'm enjoying it much more this time. Dillard has a wonderful style of writing, but the tone and content are a little to transcendentalist for me. I think one reason I'm not enamored of her is because much of what she writes rings true with me, an obvious contradiction that isn't meant for a bon mot. Her admiration and fear of nature and its violence moves me, but where I differ from her is in the amount of time she spends exploring something. I've always liked Jorge Luis Borges' response to the question of why he never wrote a novel: I feel that I do not have enough to say to fill more than a few pages (paraphrased). I think more authors should consider carefully before embarking on a novel or extended work. My mother-in-law is completing a daily devotional she wrote with her mother in which her mother's "wisdoms" are collected. While this is certainly a great experience for the two of them and my grandmother-in-law has much wisdom to share, is it worthy of a book? I hate memoirs. Dillard's book is more a collection of essays than a memoir, but it is becoming as self-indulgent as the latter and is losing me. The first chapter begins brilliantly, fades, then circles back to the beginning, a pattern I fear will be repeated throughout. She also spends a little too much time describing in poetic language the movement of animals, water, wind, sunlight, etc., descriptions intended to evoke the metaphysical but which come across, to me, as trite. It comes back around to the transcendentalist drive to explore each moment and image of nature and ring from it some greater truth, even if the ringing leaves the moment beaten and empty. I'm going to finish the book this time. I have to just so that I can move onto my next book, Big Sur.

By the way, nobody needs to point out the irony that I'm complaining about the self-indulgence of memoirists…in a blog!

4:45

Oklahoma was boring, but Texas is worse. Fortunately for us, we have the greatest hits of the 90s to keep us going. "Breakfast at Tiffany's," anyone? Oh, and let's not forget the greatest drive song ever sung by an androgynous African American, "Fast Car."

Gas in Oklahoma was $2.77. In Texas it's $3.29. Same road, 100 miles away. Texas also has a daytime speed limit and a nighttime speed limit. I'm not surprised by anything that comes out of our fearless leader's mouth anymore nor by his lack of imagination. I think I would have gone to the blow if I'd lived in this state, too.

4:45 (time change)

Amarillo has nothing except a Hooters, Big Texan Steak Ranch , and a strip bar. What devil possessed people to settle out here? The road hasn't made a bend for about 30 miles, and there hasn't been a hill much higher than a snake's belly in a wagon rut—I'm trying the local talk on for size—since Oklahoma.

Santa Fe

We arrived 13 hours after leaving MO. It's raining out here, a rarity for Santa Fe which has the landscape unusually lush. We went out to eat at Bumble Bee's, a Mexican restaurant with an appropriate Santa Fe twist: I had a burrito with lamb, and M had a quesadilla with squash and goat cheese. Excellent! M's aunt has a beautiful house with a great guestroom in the basement, and we're going to crash.

Sunday

We went to church in the middle of a thunderstorm this morning. I'm sure there's some sort of symbolism there.

It was nice to see people this morning. Regardless of my prejudices against churches, I enjoy reconnecting with people who form part of that nebulous childhood which seems to have had no beginning. I ran into Jim and Aaron—this post comes courtesy of Jim's generosity with Jesus' wireless—and had a nice, if short, chat. It's a strange sensation to meet up with childhood friends and acquaintances with whom it almost feels like an elaborate game of Grown-Up except we all know that we're really just chubbier, hairier kids who can wipe our own noses and get to have uninhibited sex.

If you know me, you know I hold a fairly dim view of church and most things religious. I want to stress that this doesn't mean that I hold the same view of the people who subscribe to the faith, and if you think that's impossible, refer to Wendie's recent post about how Xians love gay people but hate their lifestyle (paraphrased into my own strong terms). As I sat in the morning and evening church services, I found the pomp and circumstance making me feel tired. The language I was hearing was so familiar and devoid of meaning for me that I couldn't even summon the righteous anger—to bogart a term—to stand up and shout out "Wake up!" In my head. Because I'm shy. I just felt exhaustion. As Jim was speaking—great "on-stage" persona, by the way—I jotted down a note, not in reference to his speaking, about how the monologue of preaching bothers me. It's a curse of most churches, and it just so happens that the church in El Dorado is the smalltown equivalent of a megachurch, the most egregiously despotic institution. I don't understand the idea of a pastor as a spiritual leader who is inerrant, a term they don't give themselves but which may be inferred by the nature of services. Wouldn't it be more productive to enter into a dialogue with the community? Anyway, it was an interesting morning and evening.

Not much else happened today. Sat around with my grandfather and listened to stories of the Fireside Trio, a musical group he and my grandmother were in before they were married. A more poignant story was about the death of their first child, Stephen Curtis, when he was 24 days old. My grandfather walked into the room and saw immediately that he was dead. My grandmother was rocking him and held him out in her arms and said, "Oh, he looks so funny." He died on December 1,
1954.

Weird story: my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were engaged.

A few more thoughts about church: During the evening service, a metaphor got out of hand and went raging off into heresy. It didn't have the greatest birth to begin with—Xians are postal workers delivering the mail of the good message—but it got worse and worse as it went on—you don't blame the mail carrier for junk mail—and ended up being the highlight of my evening. After all was said and done, Xianity was junk mail. I felt bad for the pastor, but I don't think many people followed it that way. I wanted to raise my hand so badly…

I also despise James Dobson. Part of his answer to a child asking "Did Jesus ever do anything bad?": "When he was a child, Jesus had to learn many things, such as how to hold a cup, how to talk, and how to count… But though Jesus was a real human being, He never sinned. He never did anything wrong, such as stealing, lying, disobeying his parents, or saying bad words." Comma splices aside, I just disagree with him. It doesn't matter what kind of theological alchemy you try to pull, you can't say "human" and "sinless" and "all humans are sinners" in the same sentence. I'm sure that some of you who have infinitely more theological training than I do could back me into a corner quickly—and I would like to hear how—but I can't abide Dobson giving such a pat answer to a genuine question.

And finally, a few excerpts from a story in the denominational Sunday school handout. Our protagonist, Sue, married Fred despite his lack of faith and her own nominal state of Xianity. After a time—never specified—she becomes a real believer and a holy-roller if ever there was one. Fred resists and is quite forceful about it:

"Sue…I don't want you to ever speak to me again about being saved. You are getting to be a religious fanatic; and [sic] that's all right if that's what you want; but [sic] as for me, well, I am young, and I have a few brains, and I am not spending all my time around a bunch of religious do-goods that are soured on the world."

Well, Sue decides that she's going to be a dutiful wife and stop nagging him about playing golf on Sundays and win him over through her actions instead of her words.

When Fred returned from playing golf, he found Sue radiantly singing a hymn as she busied herself preparing dinner. She didn't mention playing golf on Sunday, he noticed. After the meal, she hurriedly washed the dishes and dressed for church. She paused during the preparations to ask him to go with her. He declined. Then when she had finished dressing, she came close, and he took her in his arms to kiss her. She was a truly sweet person and a wonderful wife, he thought to himself. After the kiss, he looked at his watch. It was only 6:45, and service began at 7:30, and it only a five-minute drive to the church.

Do you think he went? Of course not! When Sue returned, he pretended to be asleep while she read the Bible, prayed aloud—because the prayer was for her sake, not his, of course—and went to bed. Sleep had left him. Wait for it.

Before breakfast, Sue asked to be allowed to read a chapter from the Word and to pray. He consented with silence. The breakfast was well prepared and looked delicious, but for some reason Fred could only drink a cup of coffee.

That night Fred knelt with her while she prayed. After two more nights of this, Fred was sleepless and hungry because prayer makes insomniacs and anorexics out of sinners. He went to the doctor because he thought there was something wrong with his heart. He wasn't far wrong! The doctor said there "was nothing wrong organically."

At the end of the prayerfully torturous week, Fred went to church.

On the first verse of the invitation hymn Fred bounded forward, weeping as he literally ran down to the front.

Isn't that a touching and realistic story?

June 9th

I can't decide if I should post a daily blog or if I should write a separate post every time I write. It's definitely easier for me to write it and save it as one document, but the readability is an issue.

Morning

I had 3 store-bought frozen pancakes this morning that were about as good as any homemade I've ever had. What would the purists say?

My grandpa took us for a drive around the area and over to a town called Schell City. I hesitate to call 286 people a town—seems more like a crowd to me—but there you have it. How do these little pockets of people develop and exist? The first house doesn't seem as strange to me as the second and third. When do you start building houses together? We saw lots of wheat, corn, and hay fields, some of them cut and baled and others just beginning their growth. The golden wheat shines next to the deep green of the corn in a display of beauty through simple contrast.

M and I stopped by a car dealership to see some friends (unsuccessfully) then a jewelry shop to get my watch fixed and ran into friends I didn't expect to. It's surreal to me that I lived here for 2 years.

We're going out to see my grandmother then to eat at a local place called the Powder Horn. I'm amazed at how my grandpa has adapted to life alone. Last night he had a full meal waiting for us. And homemade ice cream!

Afternoon

The Powder Horn had great food and a buffalo face on the wall. Not a buffalo head. A buffalo's peeled-off face.

M mentioned an article she'd read about the farms of the future. Imagine with me: a farmer wakes up, leaves his suburban home, drives downtown to work in his Lexus, parks next to a skyscraper, strolls into an elevator and rides to the 19^th floor to check on his soybeans. He's wearing Van Heusen because he isn't going to get dirty messing with his hydroponically grown veggies. Next he steps back into the elevator and goes up a floor to check on his chickens. Exaggerated for effect, of course, but the article suggested that NYC could be a self-sustaining city if there were 14 skyscraper farms. No bugs, no transport, no soil. I'm not sure what I think about the idea. Would they have to remake Office Space with farmer automatons?

Evening

We spent a great part of the afternoon and evening making ice cream and sitting around the house. I have a chess game on the computer that I've been playing quite a bit and which is going to be my downfall. I've never been a great chess player— or even a good one—but would like to improve. My biggest problem is using multiple pieces to put the opponent into checkmate. I haven't played regularly for years, and I'm usually reduced to using my queen and a rook or two rooks to end the game. It works, but it takes more steps than it should, and it limits my game if I've lost any of those pieces. With the bishops I usually end up drawing because I back them into a corner without putting them in check. I'm having fun playing, and my summer goal is to play games where I use the different point pieces (bishop, knight, rook) to reach checkmate.

There was a concert in the downtown park of El Dorado last night. We got down there a little after 8 in time to hear the municipal band plugging away at some ubiquitous band tunes and the Midwestern requisite, "God Bless America." I say Midwestern, but it would be more fair to say "traditional"; I equate the two. Anyway, people brought lawnchairs and blankets and set up around the natural amphitheatre that looks down onto the bandstand. On a Saturday night, this was the "big" event of the weekend. Naturally I was condescending but enjoyed it nonetheless. Lexington has similar events at different parks: jazz, blues, bluegrass, etc.

A worthless trio of dorks followed. I won't go into great detail describing how annoying their inability to finish a song or their penchant for trying to be funny during a song was. It was bad. We met up with an old friend, fortunately, and were able to do the double duty of catching up and ignoring the caterwauling.

A fun evening.

June 8th - Beginnings

That blog title sounds like something for Heroes.

We set out at 7 o'clock this morning (less than an hour ago) and are making our way to El Dorado Springs, MO. We're taking a slight detour in St. Louis so that I can go to Cabela's and buy some breathable waders. There's also a fly rod I'd like to buy, but I don't see that happening. Today's drive is about 10 hours according to Mapquest, our best friend. We might also go up in the arch. M put it well: "This trip is about stopping where we've always wanted to but never have."

Yesterday was a whirlwind of shopping, packing, and cleaning. Our first shopping stop was the Liquor Barn to pick up little KY things to leave with people who open their doors to us. Some of those "little things" were bottles of bourbon including a bottle of Knob Creek for us to warm us on cold nights and cool us on hot days. Because that's what bourbon does. It's magical. A few minutes ago we passed a brown road sign (the kind used for state parks and such) that pointed the way to the "Bourbon Trail" of distilleries—Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, and possibly Maker's Mark, though I'm not sure of the latter. Bourbon is such a part of the culture here, and I've enjoyed—thoroughly and sometimes excessively—exploring it. There are so many distilleries in central KY that it's impossible to sample them all for less than $500, unfortunately, but we've done well. I really like Woodford Reserve, Bookers, and Knob Creek. Elijah Craig's 12-year-old single barrel is also really good and reasonably priced as is Rare Eagle. Anyway…

Side note: The Arcade Fire are singing "We know a place where no cars go." We shan't be going there!

I was looking through some AAA tour books and our atlas last night, and I'm quite excited about Oregon and Washington. Seattle and Portland seem like really cool towns, and though we won't have much time in them, I plan on picking some of the cooler sights to hit on our way to BC. There's a Japanese Garden mentioned in our atlas that is a must.

Chance for Audience Participation:

Okay, so we want to try something out. US highways are populated by immense amounts of trucks hauling our daily lives from coast to coast. Most of the time they're just hauling your regular old things—trailers full of produce, of Kleenexes, of cars, of furniture, of Tampons—but every now and then you see something unusual or impressive. I've already mentioned some of the things we've seen driving down the highway. What we're going to try to do is take pictures and post them and have people "guess" what they are. Be creative!

My only guess is the obvious: port-a-john for Amazons.

St. Louis

Cabela's was awesome. Easy to find; hard to leave. I knew I will be fishing (grammar note: my students would never understand the mixing of tenses I just did!) for steelhead in Oregon and Washington and that my fly rod wasn't going to handle the teens-pound beasts. The store had a sale on adequate rods so that I bought one and got one free! I also got some nice waders, a new reel, and line that will be apropos for the winter-runoff streams that are a bit different than the spring creeks I've fished.

Funny story: the store was located in a huge mall, St. Louis Mills, that was surprisingly full for a Friday morning. We went to Popeye's to grab a bite to eat, and we were the only white people who bought anything there the whole time we were in the court! Cultural stereotypes make me laugh.

$10/ea. to ride up this thing! Screw it!

Evening

We're in El Dorado! For those of you who don't speak Spanish, El Dorado means The Dorado. This is the only town outside of southern Bolivia where you smell worse when you get out of the shower than when you got in. The sulphur in the water is overpowering for those who haven't succumbed to its nocuous fumes over a lifetime. M will be buying some bottled water for our stay. Not for showering.

We noticed a strange phenomenon while driving down Highway 54. Missouri is seen as a state of stubborn jackasses—just kidding, you misery-ians!—by those outside the state, a place where there are no shades of grey and everything is one way or the highway. This polarization of attitudes is perfectly observed in the kinds of cows in MO. All along the highway we saw only solid black or solid white cows. We couldn't decide if the black cows were the liberals or the conservatives—I say liberal and "colored"—and what the symbolism of the colors might be. In the 4 hours from St. Louis to here, we saw only one herd of Jersey cows, an ostracized group of cows who had no friends and were being called "udderly useless and spineless" by the solid-colored cows on either side of them. It was sad.

Ticks. We went for a 10-minute walk behind my grandfather's house and were attacked by the little buggers. M won't step outside the house!

My grandmother is in the Alzheimer's wing of the small nursing home in town. We went and visited here briefly last night right after she went to bed. I'm not sure if she recognized me, but her eyes lit up when I walked in and she seemed genuinely excited. Outside her room is a piece of construction paper with her name and lots of pictures of her family—sons and daughters—on it, a simple effort to help her hold on to the memory of who she is. That's assuming, of course, that the life we build and the people we connect to and create are who we are. Is it too pessimistic to think that perhaps this slow devolution into helplessness and even mindlessness is a truer display of what we truly are? We want more meaning out of life, I know, but maybe there isn't.

Total Miles: 630

June 6

We're on the road again. It hasn't been decided if this jaunt between KY and PA will count toward our running total of miles, but it's certainly been a good preview of what sort of driving we'll be doing. The run from MO to Santa Fe is a little over 12 hours (and will be on M's birthday!). Woo-hoo…

I'm typing this as M is driving down the road. I bought a DC/AC converter that I can use in the car to charge the laptop and camera batteries. So far I'm not feeling the need to hork, but I'll probably be blogging quite a bit less on the tortuous roads in the north.

One of the things we're going to do this summer is take pictures of the fascinating loads you see on 18-wheelers. We've seen some of the craziest things being hauled, and I want to keep track of some of them because it's fun. A few weeks ago we saw 4 hearses being hauled by a truck. Oh, and we saw an Oscar Meyer Weiner truck, the one that looks like a hot dog! I'm so conditioned that I started singing the damned song.

Okay, it's getting curvier, so I'm off. We have about 7 more hours to Lexington, and our page of "to-dos" will probably be 2 by the time we get there. Argh.

[Later]

Much better. It's strange to be at home and not have the poodle scrambling around demanding attention and reasserting his dominion. I think we're going to go through withdrawal for a bit.

So here's an updated itinerary:

1. El Dorado Springs, MO
   
2. Santa Fe, NM
   
3. Las Vegas (where I will become Franky "I have a problem with gambling" F-ing Four-Fingers. If you don't get the reference, don't bother)
   
4. Death Valley
   
5. Yosemite
   
6. San Fran-I can never remember how to spell it-cisco
   
7. Sacramento
   
8. Highway 101 along OR and WA
   
9. Vancouver
   
10. TBD
    

It's the tourist route, but it'll good scouting time. I'm really excited about this bike ride in Idaho.

Tonight we're dropping off our plants and wine (don't want it to sour!) with some friends then beginning frantic packing. Tomorrow is going to be busy getting last minute things done, and we head to El Do on Friday morning. The schedule of the trip has been quite…amorphous. I expect there will be many more changes to the above as we go.

June 5

My dad is blow drying his hair. He's done this for as many years as I can remember.

[Later]

Okay, I was interrupted from my rumination on my dad's coif by something and am returning hours later. I won't bore us with a treatise on the subject, so suffice it to say that it is a work of art in the same vein as Guernica and causes as much discussion about the state of man's soul.

My grandmother, sister, dad, M, and I drove to a sporting goods store north of State College to try and get my dad set up for fly fishing. He's using my grandfather's rod and reel but had to buy everything else. I was going to buy a different kind of waders but came home empty-handed. As humiliating as it will be, I really must post a picture of myself wearing the neoprene waders that I do have. They leave nothing to the imagination. Funny for everyone but me.

Later in the afternoon we went to my grandmother's house and helped her trim some branches off a chestnut tree and haul them and other brush to a burn pile. It seems that everyone up here has a burn pile of junk that they accumulate for a couple of years then…burn. I'm not so keen on that. My grandma has an enormous yard to keep up with, a yard in which you could easily play an athletic game of soccer, and absolutely no actual need to be doing it all. She's in her late 70s and very fit, but she still doesn't need the hassle of weedeating a 2-3 acre yard. With 2 people on riding mowers, it takes about 3 hours to mow. I used to do it when I was young and think that it was the coolest thing because I was "driving." Now I just dread it.

My grandma is still having a hard time with my grandfather's death. My dad's 50^th on Sunday really made her miss him-my grandfather-because he would have been in the middle of things celebrating. She seemed much better on Monday and Tuesday because she spent a lot of time with us doing things. Activity seems to be a great diversion from grief. The couple of times I've been up here since his death have been, naturally, very different. Each time there have been a handful of moments in which I keenly feel his absence. I don't think I'm the kind of person who will grieve intensely and constantly; I occupy my mind and my time with things. In the case of my grandfather, I also remember how miserable his last days were and am grateful that he's done with that. M and I differ quite a bit from my dad's side of the family in regards to suffering and death. As far as I'm concerned, hit me with the morphine and screw any of that self-righteous talk of "murder by medicine." It is incredibly selfish, in my mind, to deny someone tranquility because of misguided ethics and morality. The mother in Texas whose son had a degenerative neurological disease and was on constant support is a perfect example of this selfishness. She had the brazen audacity to say that she was going to let him go when it was his time. Um, he's on life support. His time was a long time ago. He's not getting better. You are prolonging the inevitable and perhaps even misery. Terry Schiavo was gone.

Wow, what a depressing and utterly pointless post. I've never thought of this blog as an arena of personal expression, but this one certainly has been. I need to find a balance for the summer between expression and narration. Should be fun.

June 4

This was supposed to be our last day in Pennsylvania, but the whole itinerary that I blogged about yesterday has been reversed, so we're spending a bit more time here. It makes much more sense because we were wanting to weight our time in the north but were having to balance that with set dates when people could spend time with us. This way we can take our time and possibly squeeze in a longer hike. And more fishing. And spend one more day with Maxx before we abandon him.

So I got up at 6 this morning to go fishing with a gentleman whose acquaintance I made last year. We toss around the word gentleman quite a bit, but the word is a perfect description of Cam Walker. He's in his 60s and has that confidence and affability that comes with the age. Fishing is his world, and he spends as much time on the water as he can. Last year my dad somehow set us up to go fly fishing, and most of what I know about the hobby I've picked up from him in the few times we've been able to go together. He's methodical about how he fishes, but his attitude to the entire experience is so laid back that it can't help but be relaxing to fish with him. This morning he took my sister out as well and made sure she got a fish (5 and the largest!), and this evening he did the same for my young cousin. When most people say, "Oh, I'm just happy to see you having fun" you know that they're not. With Cam, you know that he is genuinely excited that you're catching fish because he knows he's helping to birth a new angler. I'm quite glad I've met him, and I'm glad to take my fishing cues from a gentleman who isn't out to catch the biggest or be the best; he just wants to enjoy the time.

We took a break in the afternoon and went to State College, the nearest city, and visited a fly fishing shop there. It didn't have the widest selection of goods, but they had a lot of neat flies and several books on states I'm planning on hitting this summer. They had one book on southeastern Appalachia that caught my eye because two of the streams mentioned as good spots in KY converge at our favorite camping spot in the Red River Gorge! We've been there several times, and not once did I think of fishing what I thought was a trickle of water. Next time…

I ate a pork chop that was pink, and now my stomach is making funny noises. I am Jack's oncoming case of Montezuma's revenge.

It's amazing to observe how each generation of a family distances itself from the previous. My parents wear clothes quite different from my grandparents', and I sometimes see my parents as being primitive and incredibly traditional. I think this is normal, and what worries me is when I think that perhaps I haven't distanced myself enough and am becoming anachronistic in my own generation, if that makes sense. It's been interesting to have one particular student in my classes this year who is that generational outsider. She's from Russia and is quite a bit older than my other students in the class (turned 19 in the spring). Those of you bred from the Church of God (Holiness) strain will recognize her: long hair in a ponytail with giant bangs; long, jean skirts every single day; and long-sleeved shirts in styles older than her. I first met her last summer in summer school, then I had her in two classes. Her family—cousins and aunts and uncles—were also here and in school, and they were here as refugees. It took me until the last day of school to ask her what kind of refugee, and I was surprised to find out that they were religious refugees. I knew that her family is Pentecostal and attend a Ukrainian Pentecostal church in KY, but I never thought that Pentecostals were a persecuted group who would get refugee status from Russia, of all places. We got into an interesting (if somewhat limited) discussion about Russian Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism, and she said acerbically to me, "How many times you go to church in your life? Never?" I just smiled. I wonder what will happen to this student, how her life will go. It seems like she's involved in this closed system which only occasionally spills over into what I would, with bias, call the "real world," but she perforce must interact with it. Don't misunderstand me to be saying that she is handicapped in any way (she was very bright and personable), but having moved into a society caught in a battle between the traditional and the modern, I can't help but think that she's aligning herself with the trappings of a generation which will, inevitably, lose.

the trip pseudo-begins

Today is officially the second day of our trip, I guess. We left Lexington yesterday afternoon and drove up here to Pennsylvania to celebrate my dad's 50^th and to drop off Maxx for the summer. This leg wasn't planned as part of the trip, and none of this is new territory, hence the "pseudo" beginning. On Tuesday we're heading back down to Lex to pack the car, work for an hour or two at school, get some sleep and food, and then we head to El Dorado Springs to the other side of my family for a couple of days.

MSLF and I have quite disparate families. Her mom's side of the family followed the Irish tradition so eloquently expressed by Family Guy of a woman knelt in prayer followed by a birth followed by a prayer followed by a birth etc. Her grandfather is the youngest of a family of more than 2 handfuls. He in turn had 5 kids. Those 5 churned out something like 13-15 grandkids (some contributed more than others), and one of those has produced 2 great-grandkids. Basically, when we get together with the immediate family it's a zoo.

My maternal family is 11 people. Granted it's still a zoo because we've got a couple of really young kids about, but aren't all kids crazy?

Another fun thing is the age difference. I'm the oldest grandchild on both sides: 7 years on one side and 8 on the other (and the 8^th is my sister). Not a whole lot in common. MSLF's family is basically a kid every 18 months for the past 38 years.

Okay, I've bored myself. My apologies.

Here's our tentative itinerary:

1. 6/7 – Drive to El Do, MO
   
2. 6/11 – (MSLF's BIRTHDAY!) Drive to Sioux Falls, SD
   
3. 6/13 – Leave Sioux Falls and begin our totally unplanned trip to Glacier Nat'l Park
   
4. 6/27 – This is our arrival date in Vancouver. The time in between is Montana, Idaho, Washington.
   
5. 7/5 – Possibly leave Vancouver for Olympic Nat'l Park and spend several days camping our way down Highway 101.
   
6. 7/14 – San Fransisco
   
7. Hazy… Think we'll be getting back to Maxx sometime around the 23^rd, but that's up in the air.
   

I'm planning on fly fishing in every state I can and possibly even in BC. I think it's going to be a great trip (though it was almost replaced by a jaunt to Iceland when I found tickets to Reykjavik for $700 and a car for 2 weeks for $900), and if you happen to live anywhere near where we'll be, we may hound you for a comfy bed. We've got all of our camping gear prepped and will be staying at campgrounds 90% of the time. I'm not sure how often I'll have wireless access, so I'm going to be saving these posts using Word 2007's nifty little blog feature and posting when possible.