oh pho toes

almost to where

western ny...
and i can't describe the feeling...
is it ecstasy?
is it mourning?
fear?
courage?
joy?
sadness?
melancholy?
...
been so long on my own don't quite know what to do...
seems so long ago since wyoming.
so long since riding with kurt
meeting kevin on the mississippi.
seems like a lifetime ago harold, liza and i left oakland.
a lifetime since the desert,
since the canyons,
since nebraska.
and it all feels like yesterday.
the cold greeted me in western new york and i was glad for it
made my outside feel like my inside feels.

shred hard

i do my best.
but i still want to be the tin whistle player...
or the budhran.

a very beary night in the alleghanies

oh sweet closed campgrounds...
with your tables and fire pits and locked gates to keep out cars.
oh sweet labor day...
with your "official" end of summer and return to school blues.
oh bears...
with your beary ways and your gorging, prehibernation food fests.
oh bear hangs...
made out of spent bike tubes, bungee cords, tattered found on the side of the road ropes and bike lock cord that kinda of only made it into a bouncy food sack suspended barely 8 feet high and about twenty feet from my not so sleeping head. if i was a bear i would have found great joy in playfully swatting it around and then eating all of the owners food as he cowered in his nylon safe haven a few feet away.

east brady, pennsylvania.

on a bend in the alleghany river.
2 days north of pittsburgh
stop in the quik e mart.
meet terri.
she asks for stories.
i tell her about canyons
and wyoming
and nebraska.
she gives me a cheeseburger.
she tells me about her brother in law who did wisconsin to san francisco in the seventies
on a skateboard.
get some.

More!

Pittsburgh!
Braddock!
Leslie!
More rusting hulks of an industry long since vanished and moved to far away countries where labor laws and unions are as non existent as environmental regulations and production standards and due to our free trade laws these imports are freely brought back into the country without a care towards the millions of lives destroyed both here and abroad!

all my thanks goes to leslie and ruthie and josh and the transformazium for the gracious hosting whilst on hiatus. if ever a favor can be done don't hesitate to ask.

leslie, your garden looks and tastes delicious.

avec amor.

the beginings of appalachia

i hit the hills in eastern ohio.
i hit the hills and i hit the extraction industries.
or whats left of them.
a down on its luck population and rusting dinosaurs.
west virginia
via the ohio river in steubenville.
i hit the hills then i hit steubenville.
it was a friday.
near on ten pm and the natives were getting restless.
i crossed the ohio in the dark,
near dark,
except for a hulking, iron monster lighting up the river and the surrounding hillsides.
I found shelter on a ridge heavily criss crossed by ORV trails and bedded down for the night to the low hum of a steel factory.
all night:
bells and whistles...
steam and smoke...
grumbly announcements made over ancient loudspeakers...
pings and horns ricocheting off the surrounding hills.
and ever thirty minutes flames would race to the heavens illuminating everything around me like a scene out of a war movie.
bright enough to read...
bright enough to be spotted in my clandestine camp spot...
bright enough to wake me and send my head spinning in even more confused circles as to what the hell is going on.
the morning greeted me sleepily but intact.
the daylight view was even more stunning than the previous night.
up and down the banks of the ohio river were factories, mills, furnaces...
all silent.
all shuttered and rusting back into the earth
all but the one i had camped above the night before.

Raccoons!

Wiley bandits.
those eyes...
midnight.
i saw them glimmering in the woods as i tucked in for the night,
I see you up in that tree!
Away with you!
i woke to the rain dumping and a slight rustling near my right ear...
hmmmm...
thieves!
as they grabbed the bag from under the rain fly and made a mad dash for the woods.
Hey!
Get back here!
That's not yours!
off they scurried
and i,
rain soaked,
retrieved the pack and tied it to the under side of a picnic table before returning to my slumber assured i had bested them.
grgrgrgrrrrrrrrippp
hmmmm....
they can't move the table...
rrrrrrrrrriiiiiippppppppppp
what the shit are they doing?
rrnnxxrrrriiiippppp
Hey!
Fuckers!
Away you rapscallions!
shit, they've torn a hole in the pack...
Hey!
I see you!
Fine!
Here, take it!
take the damned banana...
never trust anything that looks like the neighborhood watch villain.

"toenail, get up off that floor"

get away from the interstate and another america reveals itself.

gone are the landscapes dominated by walmarts, mcdonalds, and arbys

gone are the motorists rushing away...

rushing anywhere but here.

hope begins to seep in

hope that there lies another america quietly minding its own business...

quietly tending its flower beds...

quietly discussing the weather in mom and pop breakfast joints.

we'll leave the lumbering behemoths to cannibalize each other out on those ribbons.

but those towns are dying...

the walmarts and the homedepots are slowing choking them to death.

stand in a parking lot for a walmart and you feel like an insect.

tiny,

minuscule,

insignificant.

is it any wonder we have taken to driving monstrously huge trucks?

is it any wonder we have taken to gorging ourselves beyond epic proportions of lard?

america has become dominated by giants and we're just trying to keep up.

"toenail, get up off that floor"

she said as she pumped dollar bills into the soda machine, her obese son rolling around on the walmart floor...

indiana was the bleakest state i had been through...

indiana brought it all back home again...
and i was a hundred miles from gary...

small town boy in the big city

chicago took advantage of me...
she plied me with strong drink and wooed me with gastronomical delights.
she whispered softly in my ear and dazzled me with her knowledge of culture.
she spun me in circles dancing all night long
then i woke up...
poor and hungover...
and decided i need to get the hell into indiana.
ohh chicago....
hurts so good...

How can I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this?

hebrews 13:2

des moines... doesn't count.

nor does sacramento.

cheyenne, laramie, flagstaff...

no no no

sedona, moab, scotts bluff.

no no no.

no cities,

no great cities.

no great cultural cities since i left the bay area quite some time ago.

chicago.

traffic! trains! people!

beautiful people!

great food! great drink! great beautiful interesting people!

art! music! beautiful people admiring art and listening to music!

and

oh how great is my thanks towards kevin and kaitlyn,

towards siobhan and her crew,

and towards the family McGarry.

almost three months on the road before chicago

and when i arrived

filthy, smelling like garbage, and skinny as a waif

i was treated like royalty...

thank you all.