It was a dark and stormy night. I couldn't sleep. So I thought I'd write another letter. 2001, an earth odyssey, or in my case, an earth oddity. By the way, what happened to the year 2000? Wasn't the world supposed to end or something? Did I sleep through that? Is it REALLY 2001 already? Did we decide there is no year zero and jump to 2001 from 1999? How old am I and what planet is this!? SLOW DOWN!
Where was I in my unending chronicle? Oh, yeah. In Lavina last September. On Labor Day Phil and Kaye Horton had another one of their famous barbecues with plenty of food for all and home made ice cream. Eleven hungry people attended. Phil had recently poured a concrete patio off the back door. Fortunately, Robert and I had showed up that day just as Steve and Phil were putting the final touches on the concrete. Robert and Steve had a deep philosophical and religious discussion that got rather loud at times, but ended in a round of smiles, with every one's beginning opinions safely intact. I had assumed that we would eat on the new patio but instead the adults ate inside and the kids ate on the patio. 13 year old Charles showed me what homefield advantage means on his basketball court/patio. It was sunny and 80 degrees. A perfectly wonderful day. In fact, I have spent the last four Septembers in Lavina and this was by far the nicest weatherwise. While we had a few cool days, and even the obligatory snow before I left, we had several days in the 70's and 80's with sunny skies. Though much needed rain did fall that month, finally putting out the forest fires in the western part of the state. Fortunately, as dry as it was no wells went dry in town, especially as they are often only 15 to 20 feet deep. Also it was nice to have so many evenings in which the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold in my trailer. Well over half the year the evenings are cold in my trailer, though I can use my furnace.
We did have some weird weather while I was in Lavina. The summer was especially hot as well as dry. Billings recorded four new record high temperatures and tied two more. They had a record high of 95 on September 12 and ten days later had a record low of 25 for two nights in a row. In fact, one day had a high of 30 when the previous record low for that date was 33.
Interestingly, this was the first year in decades that I didn't think of myself as a year older in August. In the insurance business we go by age-nearest-birthday, so when you are 35 &1/2 you are classified as 36. Since my birthday is in February, I always seemed to think of myself as a year older in August. I don't know what it means that I didn't this year.
One benefit of getting older is that your vision worsens and you can't see how old you look in the mirror. Your features look smoother and the wrinkles don't show. Except when you wear glasses, so I NEVER look in the mirror with my glasses on. Life is better that way. Once was enough. I must be getting older, though, as they are now making remakes of movies I saw as a young adult.
One fun thing I got to do this September was watch most of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament. I am a tennis player without anyone to play with, so I really enjoy watching pro tennis. Last Fall I saw the first week of it but missed the second week. So this year I got to watch my favorite players lose one by one until there was only one left.
One thing Y2K did for me is that I saved on groceries this year. I was still eating Y2K canned goods through the end of the year, though I did run out of some things. But I never had to worry about going to the grocery store. And on occasion, when Ginger was out of something and was in the middle of cooking a meal, she would come to me.
I planted 10 tomato plants the previous May and had hundreds of tomatoes by mid September. All but 15 were green. Before the first frost in mid September, I picked all of them, gave a couple of sacks of green tomatoes to Ginger and had a couple for myself. Within the next three weeks they all ripened without even one spoiling. I love home grown tomatoes. They are my favorite food, followed by popcorn and Nacho Cheese flavored Doritoes.
Phil has a rental house and the foundation had some cracks in it, so Robert and I helped him mix and pour concrete. I just can't get away from it. As much concrete as Phil pours, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Jimmy Hoffa is buried somewhere in Lavina.
Before I left, Robert and I cleaned up his two mile stretch of highway again. It was easier this time as we had cleaned it also in May and it wasn't that dirty yet. But it did take us a hard eight hours to do it. It was in the 70's so it was a good day for it. Nonetheless I did drink 6 quarts of water that day. Late in the day when we were both tired, Robert asked me if I wanted to carry the aluminum can sack or the big garbage sack with all the heavy trash in it as we walked the last stretch of highway. I mean did I need a lifeline or what? Duh! My final answer was the grocery store bag with the aluminum cans in it.
Robert is a very good healer. He put liquid roofing asphalt on the roof of his Rocky Mountain Garage and it was cured in two days.
Before I left, Steve asked me to help him move the rest of his stuff out of the church which he had sold to Jennifer, who was expected the end of September. Of course I agreed. It is always lots of grins hanging around Steve. Fortunately Steve's daughter was in town. Traveling with her was a young man who looked even younger than his 30 years. And being 30 years old he was still into showing off how strong he was. So I let him carry all of the heavy stuff.
As thanks Steve invited me over for a home cooked meal. He grilled a steak outdoors that tasted simply superb. That, a salad and a baked potato filled me up. Steve's wife, Sherry, is a school teacher at the Lavina school. They have a contract to help teach the children at the Hutterite community about 25 miles west of Lavina. The Hutterites are a religious community that doesn't participate much with the rest of the world. I think they basically home school their children but they do have 1 or 2 certified teachers from the Lavina school to assist them. All of the teachers go out there on a rotating basis. Sherry had just completed a couple of years out there and was glad to be back at the Lavina school, which is only a quarter mile from her home. The population of Lavina is 201 so everything is pretty close to you there.
I was going to help Steve cut and split firewood but we ran out of time before I could do that. Most of the houses in Lavina are heated at least partially by firewood. Cutting and splitting firewood has always been something I enjoy doing. Steve has a gas powered machine to split the logs so my part would have been pretty easy. But it would have been fun to get out into the country and do that.
On September 17, Robert had his annual Rocky Mountain Garage show. The building inspector had been after him about having public gatherings in his Garage, so this show was by invitation only, but everybody was invited. As usual, about 60 people showed up. There were fewer performers this year, but we had a few special treats. Robert did a comedy monologue that was very well received. He did "All the News That is Not Fit to Print", a parody of some of the town's better known citizens. As far as I know he is still alive. A barber shop quartet from Billings came up and did a few songs. But the real talent was Professional Cowboy Singer Mike Beck. He lives in Lavina but is on the road most of the year on tour. He volunteered to perform and sang for thirty minutes. And after most everybody left, he got back on stage and did another 60 minutes of songs and banter for the five of us who remained. It was pretty cool, especially for Lavina.
Once again I was asked to record the show with my camcorder. I must be the only one in town with one. This time I thought of using a step ladder and setting the camcorder on it so that I could actually watch the show this year. It worked out quite well. I had to adjust the picture a couple of times when someone walked across the stage but otherwise it worked out fine.
Although I actually wrote the last Trip Letter in August I didn't get it mailed until mid September. Again this year Rose volunteered to print the pictures for me. But this year I had four pages of pictures. Rose wasn't feeling well and since it takes several days of sitting at the computer to print them, only 25 Trip Letters with pictures got sent out. I want to thank Rose a lot for all the work she did on the pictures last year and the year before. She did it for me for free. I tried to send the pictures to one of a group of people who could share with the others. All of the pictures for Trip Letter #8 as well for this one are on my website, datelineaquarius.com.
We had only two barrel parties this year. One in May and one on September 23. The high that day was 42 and I thought it might be too cold for an evening barrel party, but it was just right with the warmth from the fire in the barrel. Terry and Glenna, who now live 20 miles north of Lavina, brought the barrel in to town so we could party down. I bought two dozen hot dogs to roast over the fire. That should have been plenty for the 8 of us who attended the party. But a no longer practicing medical doctor who shall remain nameless dropped three hot dogs into the fire as he attempted to roast them. No one else dropped more than two. The fire gods did not go hungry that night. In all, about 8 hot dogs fell into the fire that night. Actually that was very strange because in all of the 7 or 8 previous barrel parties I have attended in Lavina over the years, I doubt that more than two hot dogs have been lost that way in all of them combined.
I scheduled my time to leave Lavina according to my KC Chiefs schedule. I had at first planned to leave on Tuesday, September 19. But I noticed that the Chiefs were playing Denver the following Sunday and I would be able to pick up the game on a Billings TV station. Their next game was a Monday night game which I could pick up on my Satellite and then an open date. So I stayed an extra week to watch the Denver game. I figured the next two weeks would be good travel weeks. I was going to visit Shari in Show Low. But she was on nights for two weeks so I needed to take two weeks to get there. There is a saying that nurses eat their young and Shari says they do it while on the night shift.
On Tuesday, September 26, I went to say goodby to Robert and Ginger but could not find them. I finished getting ready to leave and pulled my trailer to the side of Ginger's house. When I still couldn't find them I went to the cafe for breakfast, assuming they were on an early morning hike. While eating I saw Robert walk by so I grabbed him and made him watch me eat. He said that Jennifer had called the previous evening and would be in Lavina that evening. He asked if I could stay another day and help unload her rental truck. Robert had recently twisted his back and was still not 100% so I said yes. It was still early in the morning and I had nothing to do so I did a couple of things that needed doing on my trailer. Since I had empty waste water tanks and time on my hands I took some special cleaner and put some in each and filled the tanks with water. After several hours I drove around town, stopping at every street so the water could jiggle around in the tanks. Then I emptied them. I am NOT big on cleaning. This is supposed to be done once a year and this was the first time I had done it. So already Jennifer had done some good and she wasn't even in town yet. On Thursday morning it was time to leave. At 8:45 I went to Ginger's house to say goodby again. Robert was still asleep in bed (and I think of all the hard times he has given ME about not doing mornings!) Ginger, Jennifer and her friend Dan were there drinking coffee. Eventually we dragged Robert out of bed and went to the cafe for a goodby breakfast. We ate slowly and talked a lot and I didn't really want it to end. I felt a little sad about leaving. And while it would be 75 degrees that day, I knew winter was not far away. Dan has the same birthday as Robert; and of course, Ginger, Terry and I also share the same birthdate. Some coincidence.
At 10:30 I hit the road. I had planned my trip so I could spend the night in Casper. They have a Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club. I was out of good whiskey and had been drinking cheap stuff because booze is expensive in Montana. I wanted to stop at Sam's Club to buy good whiskey at discount prices. I found the liquor department but all it had in it was beer, wine and some vodka. I asked the clerk where the whiskey was. It turned out that they had just gotten their liquor license and the first truckload of liquor had arrived the previous night. They were busy stocking the shelves. If I had arrived before that day they would not have had any liquor to sell me.
At Casper I left the Interstate and took the back roads on my way to Craig in NW Colorado. I saw an unusual amount amount of road kill on the highways from deer to smaller animals. And lots of skunks for some reason. Maybe they realized that they stink and that people don't like them and were committing suicide enmass.
I found a place to camp on BLM land 30 miles south of Craig, a few miles south of the Yampa River. Most of the land was covered in tall sagebrush so I had to look to find an open area to camp. I found one a quarter mile off the dirt road which eventually went to the river. Although I was at 6400 feet, there were no trees, though lots of hills. I camped there for free but all of the campsites by the river were fee areas.
The weather here was nice with highs in the 70's and warm nights despite the elevation. I stayed for five days until a storm system was forecast for the area. I hiked twice while I was there. The first hike was fine. Then I began to get tired. On the second hike I had to huff and puff even going DOWN hill. Something was wrong. The only thing I could think of was that there were long distance electric power transmission lines that passed by my trailer a quarter mile away. When I left my strength returned.
The next day I stopped in Rifle, Colorado to mail some letters. I felt good while I was there. It wasn't that the town had good energy, but rather I felt good. If I hadn't been so tired from the previous few days, I might have had enough sense to stop there for lunch and see if the feeling lasted. I definitely want to go back there and camp for a few days to check it out.
I did go jogging along the freeway but felt very tired. Then I realized that I was running on fumes.
Sometimes I get tired of making a fool out of myself so much. But I'm so damn good at it!
I must be Irish. People are always calling me "Oh! Jim!"
Three years prior I had driven through Moab, Utah, arriving on SH 128. This road follows the Colorado River and has created a beautiful canyon. This time I would camp there and spend some time enjoying it. The Moab area looks a lot like Sedona with all of the red sandstone rocks but is more rugged and much larger an area.
When I came through here three years ago I had noticed lots of small places to camp along the river. But this time they were all closed to camping. All camping along the river was now confined to fee areas. Camping fees were $10 per night and $5 for a primitive site. They did have outhouses but no drinking water. I later found out that at the end of Sh 128, as it joins with US 191, there is a piped spring where people get water.
There are a couple of dirt roads that go back into the hills on which camping is allowed as long as you have a portable toilet (or a trailer, what is called a self contained unit.) I pulled onto Onion Creek Road and found a campsite. There was a sign that said Parking and Camping to the left. So I set up camp. The next day I found out that I had set up camp in the parking lot and that the camping area was behind a hill at the back of the parking lot. So I moved. I had walked part way down the road when I first got there but stopped when I saw a sign that said no motorized vehicles. The next day I walked down the road and saw signs that said camping was allowed there. I wondered how camping was to be allowed there if no motorized vehicles were allowed. Finally I realized that the sign referred to no motor vehicles OFF ROAD in that area but I could drive back there on the road. I'm slow but sometimes I get there.
The scenery was beautiful with spires, mesas and other formations carved out of the red rock. There wasn't a lot of vegetation but what there was was green. That first day I hiked up Onion Creek Road four miles just admiring the sights. By this time I had recovered from my five days south of Craig. Onion Creek was 50 feet from my trailer. After my hike I did one of my favorite activities; I sat outside in the sun and stared into space for a couple of hours. After a good hike, sitting in the sun for a couple of hours is very relaxing and invigorating.
The next day I road my motorcycle into moab for a paper and to look around. Being in a valley, the town is built pretty much on the highway. Riding down that highway it looks like there is nothing in town but a few motels and lots of places to eat. But I did ride around until I found where they hid the houses, where the valley widened just a bit.
It felt so good in Moab that I didn't want to go back to my campsite, as nice as that was. When I first got to town I found a New Age shop called Soul Food. It has a few books and other New Age stuff. There was a young female clerk with very nice energy. I asked her if there were any New Age groups in town that allowed strangers to participate. Although she was very nice I don't think she understood what I wanted, though maybe I didn't articulate what I wanted very well. She told me there was a Center across the street. I went there but all it was was an office along a corridor behind a restaurant. The door was locked and was still locked when I came back two hours later. So I gave up on my quest.
Moab is mountain bike heaven. There are lots of trails on which to ride. People come from all over the country to ride the trails surrounding moab. I saw a huge number of young people in Moab, flower child/Rainbow people type people. For me that is always an instant indication that there is very good energy there. These young people flock to these areas. I bought a bottle of Coke and rode to the city park and sat on a bench for an hour or two and just soaked up the energy. It was sunny and 82 degrees with very low humidity. Finally, with a sigh, I got up and rode back to my campsite.
The hygrometer in my trailer said it was 10% humidity. The next day I drank 50 ounces of water before I left for my hike and took a litre bottle of water with me. I was determined to turn around after I had drunk 1/2 of the water. I rode my motorcycle up to where I had stopped the previous hike and began my hike from there. Onion Creek crosses the road 10 to 15 times in the first ten miles. The road leads to a private ranch after 13 miles.
I walked another 4 or 5 miles up the road. I couldn't stop because each turn in the road brought another beautiful view. Gradually yellow and gray sandstone intermixed with the red. Finally I reached a high point in the road. In the distance I could the mountains of the Manti-La Sal National Forest. By this time most of my water was gone, so I turned around and started the journey back to my camp. I got thirsty. I realized that I needed just a litre bit more water.
Moab was a big uranium mining town back in the 50's and early 60's. Lots of the tailings from the mines still are deposited on the banks of the Colorado River. After my first visit to Moab I noticed that I began to glow in the dark. In fact there are no street lights in Moab. No need for them.
One day I rode my motorcycle down Castle Valley Road. It is a paved road leading to the Manti-La Sal National Forest. First I turned onto the road that goes through Castle Valley. It is a three mile paved dead end road that passes between a couple dozen houses. It is in a valley. Along the road I saw at least two geodesic dome houses, a few underground houses and several A-frame houses. I got back on the main road and rode into the National Forest. It was mostly rock, not many trees, and it was cold up there. I was camped at 4400 feet but this was probably 7000 feet. There is a paved road which puts you out on US highway 191 just south of Moab. There is an offshoot road which takes you higher on the mountain. I took it but it got even colder and clouded up so I turned around and went back to camp.
The weather forecast was for three days of rain. Though is was mostly cloudy with some sun in the afternoons, it only rained the morning of the second of the three days. But it got substantially cooler. So on my sixth day there I left for Show Low.
On my last day at my campsite outside Moab, my flashlight batteries went dead, the fuse for my radio went out and my inverter broke. I had bought the extended three year warranty on the inverter, and it was replaced. I had a back-up inverter, luckily. The other two problems were easy to fix, but I thought it very strange that all three things would happen on the same day, just two days after the fuse in my video-player broke, also.
I left my campsite at sunup. Just south of Moab I took a side trip to Needle Point National Park, as suggested by George. This was a free overlook. I wasn't very impressed, perhaps because I was too far away from it. Basically it is a valley full of hills which end in points or spires. The rest of the day was ten hours of hard driving to get to Shari's driveway by 6 PM. Driving from Lavina to Show Low I kept track of how many miles I drove and how much gas I bought. I averaged right at 8 1/2 mpg, so whatever had been wrong with my van had disappeared.
I didn't do much in Show Low this time. I was there for about three weeks. I hiked when Shari worked and on her off days we played together. On October 29, we had a feast. Shari had to work on Thanksgiving but wanted to do a big turkey dinner. Shari got up at 6 AM to start the meal and her friend LaJeanne came over at 7:30 to help. When I wandered in about noon, I asked if I could help. Fortunately they said no. My task for the day was to pick up Milly, our 92 year old Scorpio friend. We ate at three. There were only six of us for dinner but we could easily have fed 28. We had a 23 pound turkey, all the side dishes and three home cooked pies. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! After eating my own cooking for so long, I forget that food CAN taste good. After the party was over, my only duty was to take Milly home while Shari and LaJeanne cleaned up. Are these women wonderful or what!?
While I was in Show Low I got the oil changed in my motorcycle. I wanted the fuel and oil filters changed, also. When I picked it up they had charged me $43.10 and told me that it had no oil or fuel filters. I wasn't awake yet so I paid and left. Later I began to think that $43 was a lot to pay for merely draining the oil and putting new oil in. I looked at my itemized bill and saw no oil filter listed under parts. $65/hour with half hour minimum plus 10% shop charge plus 4 quarts oil plus tax. I get my van's oil changed for $19.95 plus tax, including a filter. Then I remembered that I changed the motorcycle oil myself the last time and replaced the filter.
I took the motorcycle back to the mechanic, avoiding the man at the front desk who had been obnoxious. He affirmed that he had not changed the oil filter. Co-incidently he had a bike just like mine on the rack and was working on it. I showed him where the filter was and he found it. Then he changed the filter on mine without further charge. He had mentioned to me that the motorcycle he was working on, which was the same make and model as mine, kept breaking down and needed to be repaired and they didn't know why it kept breaking. Maybe it was because they had never changed the oil filter! I wanted to tell them I was a motorcycle consultant and charged $100/hour, minimum one hour. But instead I just resolved never to go there again. If they don't know more than I do, they are in big trouble.
Shari is still in the SCA and her group participated in the annual area Oktoberfest. I went with her to hang out and just enjoy a nice day. Shari said that when she gets medieval down pat, she is going for maxi-evil. Shari! You devil, you.
While at Shari's she did serve me some mead which she had made. Mead is a honey based wine which I had long wanted to taste. I don't really remember it but it is in my notes so I must have liked it.
It had been cooler than normal in Show Low so on November 2, I left for Bouse in the southwestern Arizona desert. Several years earlier I had driven Highway 87 from Payson to Phoenix in the dark and since then I had wanted to see it in the light as it looked pretty. So this is the way that I went. I didn't want to go through Phoenix so I took the first road west from the highway. On the map it looked deserted but in reality it was a metropolis. It was a major road but was busy. After 1/2 hour my brakes overheated and I barely made it into a parking lot before they disappeared altogether. This happened so suddenly, and I didn't think I had stopped at that many lights, so I thought something major might have gone wrong. I checked the fluid in the master brake cylinder - twice! It was boiling but otherwise full. It was 4:30 and I hadn't even made it halfway through Phoenix yet. There was a shopping mall across the street so I went there to walk around to give myself some time to calm down and for my brakes to cool down. After an hour I had brakes again and was on my way. It was another thirty minutes before I got to the Sam's Club which was one of the reasons I went the way I did. After shopping at Sam's, I got on a freeway and was out of Phoenix in twenty minutes.
Suddenly I could breathe again. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my chest and solar plexus. I always experience this when I go to or through Phoenix. It is so huge that my energy is crushed out of me. That is the reason I can't visit my friends there, Argena and Renee. I used to have to eat or at least nibble on my long drives, but I don't anymore. In fact, I want to NOT eat. For me, being in a big city is like being in Hell. Every part of me hurts and all I want to do is leave. That makes it rather difficult to enjoy visiting with the people I went there to visit. Apparently I hide my pain well as no one seems to notice. Since there is nothing they can do to help me I do keep it to myself.
I got to Bouse 1 1/2 hour after sundown. So I finally got to make use of the special headlights Ed made for me. The motorcycle which I carry on the front of my van blocks my van's headlights. Ed made me some headlights which I can put on my motorcycle carrier for driving at night. I had put them on before I left the parking lot in Phoenix as I knew it would be dark before I got to Bouse. They worked great.
The reason I went to the low desert when I did was to experience some warm weather before winter set in. This I was to be denied. The high temperature the next day was 56 degrees, with normal being 82. It was to be December before we got up to normal. The entire winter we had temperatures of 10 to 15 degrees below normal. But it was very sunny until mid January. That was good because my solar panels kept my batteries full.
My first campsite was 2 miles from Bouse where I had camped the year before. I had been there a week when I saw a coyote as big as a German Shepherd. He was on the top of a nearby hill yipping away as his pack yipped back at him from the other side of the hill. This was the first coyote I had ever seen. I saw another one later at another campsite in California.
That November my old fraternity house at Kansas University was torn down when the University bought the whole block for expansion. The building was brand new when I joined the fraternity in the Fall of 1965. If I had known they were going to tear it down I would have visited it when I was last in Lawrence. I have not been in the building since I graduated except for many times in my dreams. I was in Lambda Chi Alpha. Unbeknownst to me my nephew pledged Lambda Chi at William Jewel College in Liberty, Mo. He had not realized that I was a Lambda Chi also. There is another Jim Kinerk who lives in Seattle, Wa. He also was a Lambda Chi. Small world.
I had been in Bouse for 19 days when I overheard the campground host at the Bouse Community Park saying that the BLM rangers were flying over the area taking pictures of us campers. They had some kind of computer program which recognizes the tops of trailers and spits it out if we have been in the same spot for more than 14 days. And they were enforcing the 14 day limit assiduously. I left the next day.
Since it was still early in the season, I went to a campsite 6 miles south of Quartzsite. They have a library in Quartzsite where I could access my e-mail. I got to this campsite and was set up by 12:30. When I set up my satellite dish, it was already pointing at the signal, so all I had to do was tighten the bolts. I thought I saw a loose screw on my motorcycle so I went to tighten that. Somewhere I found some energy. I checked the water in my motorcycle battery and found it low. Then I proceeded to clean the trailer and do all the stuff that needed doing, some of which I had been putting off for 14 months. One hour and forty minutes later I ran out of things to do. I was sad, because I so seldom have the energy to do anything and I was sure there were other things that I could do but couldn't think of them.
My Chiefs didn't do well that Fall. At one time they lost three games in a row, the last by the score of 10 to 9. It was then that I realized they were suffering from 10 to 9 tis.
I went into a blue funk after the election. I needed to find the Grand Funk Railroad singing group and get the funk out of there.
One thing I learned is that Spam isn't too bad if you cook it on the grill. But be sure to take the lid off first.
On December 6, I moved back to Bouse to a different campsite, though still close to town. The road leading to this campsite went across a few small washes. Unfortunately I dipped too low on one of them and bent one of my four trailer stabilizers. I should have been watching but wasn't. It still works but not as well.
I was about 2 1/2 miles from Bouse so instead of hiking 8 miles every other day, I just walked into town for my paper every day. This was not a good thing because my 8 mile hikes are when I get lost in thought and they get rid of the cobwebs in my mind as well as my body. Two 2 1/2 mile daily hikes didn't do it.
By this time I was well aware that my energy had gotten very low and that I had become a recluse. Looking back at this time I realized that since I had gotten to Bouse my chronic insomnia had gotten ten times worse. I couldn't get to sleep or stay asleep. I also lost all desire to eat. Sometimes I had to force myself to at least eat a bowl of soup before I went to bed. I was horribly tired all day either from lack of sleep or food. I lost ten pounds by the end of December. I also began to notice the absence of another lifelong habit. Ever since I was a kid I have kicked rocks. On all of my hikes in the last 12 years I have continued with the obsession and compulsion to kick rocks. Every one that is suitable. By this time I realized that I no longer wanted to kick rocks. I could kick one if I wanted to, I just didn't want to. So I knew I had lost another chunk of energy. I still don't want to kick rocks. After losing the ten pounds I came to find out that I have washboard stomach muscles. It is just that they are still covered by an inch of fat. But, by gosh, they are there. I lost so much weight I can see my adams apple again.
On January 1, as in every year, my energy dropped to zero. But this time it meant that I could eat if I wanted to and I began to sleep a little better. I also didn't want to do anything. I had to force myself to hike. Then I sat outside in the sun all day, reading. I had also lost the ability to sit outside all day and just stare into space. I couldn't do that anymore. There was just a frightening void, so I had to read. I really enjoyed sitting outside staring into space and letting my mind roam. I missed that.
At this campsite I had been feeling worse every day. On December 16 I awoke with some mild cold symptoms so I knew I had to leave. I moved to another campsite three miles away for the remainder of my allotted 14 days. The cold symptoms disappeared.
I saw a tag on the back of my neck. It said: 100% Pure Bullshit. Do not remove under penalty of law. But I cut it off anyway.
On December 22 I moved across the Colorado River to a new campsite seven miles west of Parker, AZ. Just across the river from Parker is Earp, Calif. Supposedly Wyatt Earp spent some time in the area, hence the name. Earp consists of a Post Office, a very "Mini" Mart, and an auto/RV/Marine repair shop. That's it, though there may be a house behind a hill behind the garage. I couldn't tell for sure.
I found a place to camp just south of California state highway 62. This was the first time I had camped over here. I hiked down the 4WD road for a couple of miles. There were several better places to camp but electric power lines ran through them so they were out.
Shortly after I got up the next morning I heard a faint "hello". I went to the door and there was this woman standing there. She said she was camped north of the road in a better spot and would be leaving in a day or two and I could have her spot. Her name was Jan. She was probably mid 50's but seemed younger. She took me across the street and showed me a campsite across the wash from where she was camped. We talked for two hours.
She has been living the lifestyle for several years. She is from Oregon. During the summer she does motel maid type work in northern Arizona and in the Fall she moves to southern Arizona. Only this time she got here too late and had not been able to find a job. She also had no money. She was awaiting money from her sister so she could get gas and go north to the resort city of Lake Havasu City where she might be able to find work. She had two dogs, Sara and Sara's son, Murphy, and a cat.
She was living in an old 1947 model 19 foot travel trailer which had neither plumbing nor electricity. She read by candlelight and took sponge baths. She had bought the trailer a few months earlier for $200. She said it was bigger than her previous one. She pulled it with a 1975 Cadillac which she had bought four years earlier for $400. She had been at this campsite since December 1.
That afternoon I did move to the spot she had shown me. It was a much better place and flatter than the other side of the road. On Christmas I took her to Parker for dinner. We found only one restaurant open so we went there. Our choices were a ham dinner or a turkey dinner. We both had turkey. I've had better meals but it was Christmas. Since she had no money I pawned off my last four cans of Y2K Spam on her. She probably fed it to the dogs. And believe it or not, I broke for lunch an hour ago and someone gave me a Spam cookbook published by Hormel Foods! I don't get no respect.
My trailer takes 1/2 amp per hour to run such things as the temperature regulator on the refrigerator and the hot water heater, both of which run on propane. The 1/2 amp also runs the noxious gas detector which goes off every time I eat chili. Too bad restaurants, especially Mexican restaurants, don't have no farting zones like they have for smokers.
The registration for my van and my motorcycle expires each year on December 31. George sent me my renewals in mid November which I promptly returned. It takes two weeks to process and then back to George and then to me. So time is of the essence. I sent it in this year and they sent it back. As always I sent proof of insurance but this year they wanted to know how much coverage I had. I got out my policies and photocopied the schedule page and sent everything back to them. Fortunately I received my renewals when I left Bouse on 12/22. Early in January a BLM ranger came by to see how long I had been camped at the site west of Earp. I told him I knew the rules and moved every 14 days between there and Bouse. After I went back into my trailer I noticed him hanging around for 15 minutes so I went back out and asked him what was wrong. He said he couldn't find the renewal date on my license plate. Fortunately I had put in on but in Texas it goes on the inside of the windshield. I showed it to him and he left. One month later he stopped by again. I had been to Bouse for two weeks and back to Earp by this time. He assumed I hadn't moved but when I pointed out that it was exactly four weeks since he had last been there, and of course I would be back there, he was satisfied. Parker, AZ has a nice park and children's center. It is someplace where the kids can go and hang out. They have video games, pool tables and pop machines with a full time adult attendant. I thought that was very nice. They also have a basketball court outside which I tried to use, but the goal is 10 feet, six inches; which is six inches too tall. I asked a park worker who was watering the grass about it and he said the city knew it was too tall but wanted it that way. This is strange because I can think of no good reason to have the goal too high. A plus and a minus in the same paragraph.
While filling up with gas one day in Parker a man approached me and asked if I remembered him. While his voice was familiar, I didn't. It was Rudy. Two years prior we had camped close to each other just off Plomosa Road, close to Quartzsite. Then I remembered him. A few times he would get on his bike and he and his dog would come and visit with me. This day we would talk for only a few minutes and then each go his own way.
When I went back to Bouse I camped four miles south of town where I had camped two years prior. While there Fred showed one day. He said he was driving Plomosa road and recognized my rig from the highway. I had met him through Santarra and he had been camping with me when the Sedona rangers tried to kick me off their National Forest land two years earlier. Fred went back to California and I hadn't seen him since.
He is not one to stay still. He camped close to me for a day or two and then had to move on. I saw him a couple of times more that winter, each for a day or two. He had been busy since I had seen him last. Among other things, he went to Mississippi, bought a boat and lived on the Tennessee River for two months. He also left his trailer somewhere in the south and took a thousand mile bicycle trip. He is a photographer and is always looking for that perfect picture. Too bad he isn't writing these letters instead of me. His life sounds much more exciting.
For the remainder of the winter I would bounce back and forth every 14 days between the campsite 4 miles south of Bouse and the one just west of Earp, (excuse me!) California. While in the bouse General Store one day I saw Jack next to whom I camped the previous winter for six weeks in the Ocotillo RV Park in Bouse. He would talk to me for hours at a time and I spent several hours installing his Dish Network satellite and explaining to him how it operated. He looked right at me and didn't know me. A couple days later I saw a man named Oscar in the Store. He came up and said hi to me like we were old friends. Apparently he had camped in the Ocotillo campground last winter also. Even though we would have several nice conversations on several meetings at the Store, I never could remember him. He talked about things that went on there that I remembered, I just could never place him in any of my memories. Strange.
I want to thank my Dad, now, for doing me the great service of forwarding my mail to me every week or two for the last 12 years. And refusing re-imbursement for postage. I never thought it would last this long. But now, it not only seems like forever, it probably WILL be forever. Thanks, Dad. I can never repay you, but I will love you forever.
I was camped south of Bouse in January when some clouds started rolling in. They lasted long enough for my batteries to get real low. On Friday I went to town for my paper. The forecast was for clouds and rain for the next seven days. As it was cloudy then, I immediately went back to my campsite and moved into the Ocotillo RV Park for a week. As I was setting up camp in the Park the clouds broke up and we didn't seen a single cloud for over a week. I had no idea I was that powerful.
I felt much worse that week in Bouse, the Ocotillo Park is right in Bouse. While I was there I was talking to Karen, who owns the General Store and who saves a newspaper for me every day. We were talking and she told me that the local people in Bouse are heavy into drugs, don't take care of their kids and are downright meanspirited. She even used the word evil. The local school serves breakfast and lunch and she said the kids probably don't get dinner. Obviously this is why I feel so bad when I camp in Bouse. I even felt worse this winter camping 4 miles south of town. This coming winter I will camp farther from town to see if I can avoid that energy. It hurts real bad.
One day while hiking just north and east of Bouse I came across a stick of what looked like dynamite. It was right on the road, so I picked it up as I didn't want someone to drive over it and blow themselves up. It was red, an inch in diameter, seven inches long with a green wick. I carried it in my shirt pocket until I finished my hike. Then I took it to the General Store but left it out by the highway. I figured that Karen probably would not want a stick of dynamite in her store. One of my few intelligent decisions.
I told Karen what I had found and she called the sheriff's office. About an hour later a deputy showed up. I took him to where I had left the dynamite. I picked it up to show it to him and I thought he was going to shoot me, so I put it down again. He looked at it from a distance and said it did look like dynamite. He called some helicopter rescue people to come and get it. After all was said and done, it turned out to be what the rescue people called a big firecracker, meaning it was filled with black powder and not nitroglycerin. If it has a wick it is not dynamite. Dynamite needs a blasting cap of some sort to set it off. Though it does become quite unstable with age and a jarring movement could set it off. That was enough excitement for one day.
When I got back to my Earp (excuse me!) campsite, Jan was still there, despite that the ranger had told her she had to leave. She would eventually be there for over another month. We did some hiking together and gathered some rocks for her cactus and rock garden which she had created there.
By this time I was running out of cash. All of my funds were now in gold and in two worthless stocks. For the year 2000 I lost more on my two stocks than I spent. I bought just as the market was beginning to crash and bought two stocks that would be hurt most by the falling market. If I EVER give you any financial advice, either shoot me or run away as fast as you can. Uh, I prefer the latter. Just in case you are not literate enough to know what "latter'' means, I prefer that you run away from me.
In December I sold three gold coins to a jeweler in Quartzsite. In January I was able to sell ten coins to an individual. As I write this in mid July, I need to sell more gold coins. I keep waiting for gold to go up but I'm sure that it never will until I sell it all. So hold on to yours. You will know when I've sold the last of my coins because the price of gold will go up.
In late January it did cloud up and rain quite a bit for the next seven weeks. It was never cloudy all day and the days were getting longer so I had enough energy in my batteries to get by. Several towns in the area had already received a year's supply of rain by March 1. However, that is only three inches.
George came to visit me on January 28. I had sent him a letter with a photograph and directions to get to my campsite outside Earp (excuse me!) I was watching the Superbowl and happened to be outside at halftime when I saw George turn into Jan's campsite instead of going to the other side of the wash to find my road. My road is hard to find. You had to know that it is there and then where to look. I liked it like that. I grabbed my flashlight and waved it at him and ran down to show him where the road was.
As usual, it was great to see George. I have such a good time when he comes to visit. Our great quest this time was to see Kartchner Caverns in southeast Arizona. It is a state park. They give one hour tours and are booked for months in advance. We had a 9 AM appointment for February 1. The day before, we went to Algodones, Mexico where we can buy prescription medicines for about 1/3 the cost of buying them in the U.S. We then drove to Benson, AZ where we spent the night. Kartchner Caverns is nine miles south of Benson. It was discovered in 1974 and purchased as a state park in 1988. It opened up to the public only 2-3 years ago.
The State Parks Department has been very careful to maintain the integrity of the caverns. You have to go through an airlock to enter the caverns. It averages 68 degrees and 99% humidity year round. From May to September the Caverns are closed as that is when the bats come home to roost. I am not much of a spelunker, this being only the second cavern I have ever been in, but George loved it. It was hard to see much inside, I thought, as they kept the lighting indirect and low to maintain the constant temperature and humidity. Cameras and camcorders were not allowed.
After we left Kartchner, we went to Tombstone, AZ, a town I had always wanted to visit. Historical Downtown Tombstone looked pretty much as it had 120 years ago, except for the automobiles and lack of dead bodies on the road. And it had been paved. I enjoyed this a lot. We also visited Boot Hill. There are 250 people buried there. Most were buried between 1880 and 1882. Two were listed as suicides, which I thought was pretty silly and a waste of time. If you wanted to commit suicide all you had to do was walk down Main Street and chances are someone would shoot you dead anyway.
After Tombstone we drove to Nogales, AZ as George wanted to buy some more medicines across the border. As we entered Nogales we were surrounded by three cop cars with all lights flashing. We had just entered a 25 mph zone but I had noticed that George was doing only 25. They got out of their cars and surrounded us. I told George not to worry since I knew he was only driving 25. Though three cars did seem a little extreme for mild speeding. One cop told me to keep my hands where he could see them, so I put them on the dashboard.
As it turned out a truck resembling George's had just been reported stolen. As soon as he could prove who he was via his driver's license and the truck's license plates were registered to him and verified by computer, we were allowed to go.
After a quick visit to Nogales, Mexico we left. We took I-19 north to Tucson. According to the mileage markers, we had 100 miles to go to get to Tucson. We were driving 65 mph, but the miles seemed to fly by, as if we were in a time warp. It took me half of the way to Tucson before I realized that they were kilometer markers rather than mile markers. But it was still fun to see those markers fly by us as if we were doing 100!
I suggested we bypass Phoenix on our way back as we would hit it right at rush hour. But George wanted to follow I-10 and that is what we did. We hit the eastern edge of Phoenix at 5 PM. I figured it would be stop and go for the next 2 hours. George said not to worry, so I didn't. We cruised from one end of Phoenix to the other at 65 mph without having to slow down even one time. I still don't know how he did that. I find more traffic than that in Phoenix in the middle of the night.
It was well after dark before we arrived back at our campsite south of Bouse. Forty miles from Bouse we left the Interstate and went north 10 miles to catch the highway which takes us to Bouse. Before we get to that highway, we cross another one and have to stop. There is a big stop sign and a bright flashing red light. 100 yards from the stop sign I realized that George didn't see the sign so I yelled at him to stop. He jammed on the brakes and we barely stopped in time. Lucky we did because stopped at the stop sign in the opposite direction was a Sheriff's deputy. Figuring these come in threes, we kept our eyes wide open the rest of the way home. Fortunately we missed that number three, or maybe just passed him in the dark of night, unseen and unknown.
The next day, George's last, we went to Quartzsite and toured the Main Event, which is a huge flea market. George collects antique tie clasps with chains and a certain line of antique toy cars. He found several there of each and was able to bargain for good prices, so he was a happy camper. At 68 degrees and sunny skies, this was the best weather we experienced during George's visit, though 68 was still several degrees below normal for early February.
George left the next morning and I was on my own again with just an occasional thought for company. One of which was that Jesus invented the modern shower because he could never get IN a bathtub, he just floated on top. That was why he was also always changing the water into wine, something he could work with. When he swallowed water, his stomach just threw it back out. I can imagine CNN interviewing him back then: Sir, how do you walk on water? I put one foot in front of the other, just like on land. Oh that kidder!
First Rule of Government. If it ain't broke, keep fixing it until it is.
A wealthy billionaire ( okay, so it's redundant) had 67 children. He was always putting on heirs.
I realized that I must be the Anti-Christ because I can change wine into water (think kidney function.)
After George left I still had five more weeks of cloudy skies and cool temperatures. My furnace doesn't have a pilot light. It has an electric ignition. Unfortunately some times it won't ignite so I use the stove as backup. This arrangement is inconvenient but it works. I can't leave the furnace on overnight because if it fails to ignite the fan runs all night and runs down my batteries. So sometimes during the winter it gets pretty cold when I get up in the morning. In January in Bouse the sun rises at 8 and sets shortly after five. It is generally between 45 and 50 degrees in the morning in my trailer when I creep out of bed for a minute to turn on the oven. I am always glad when Spring arrives so it is not so cold every evening and morning.
Along with not eating, sleeping or kicking rocks, that winter I also didn't shave or shower as often. In the mountains I always know when it is time to shower because the bears run from me, but there are no bears in the desert. In the winter, when Karen delivers my paper to me instead of waiting for me to come into town, I know it is time to shower. Since I couldn't sleep I decided to fire the Sandman and hire the Ether Bunny. That didn't work either.
My birthday last year happened to fall on a full moon. Twenty minutes after the sun set the full moon arose. I meditated from 5 minutes before sunset until 5 minutes after the full moon arose, hoping to use that energy to gain some insight into my life. Unfortunately nothing happened except I felt relaxed. I had to try.
Honey is the only food that never spoils. This is not a joke. I either heard it or read it somewhere.
On one of my hikes I met a retired couple from Texas. We got to talking and he said that he owns five oil wells in Texas that were capped when oil prices were low in the '80's. When prices started going up 2 years ago he called the oil company which pumps the oil from his wells. They told him they couldn't uncap his wells . They said it was all politics and these wells wouldn't be uncapped in even his grandchildren's lifetimes. This man drove a brand new pickup and was living off the interest from the money he made when he sold all of his rental properties. He was very credible. Earlier that winter I had met four other people who had friends or relatives who had similar stories. His story was the only one I heard first hand. Think about it. Why do we have to drill for new oil when we have probably millions of capped oil wells in existing oil fields?
My brain is like a computer. It crashes a lot and doesn't have enough memory.
I think I lost my memory but I can't remember.
They say everything is a matter of timing. My timing belt must be broken.
I must be real smart because I know what I know. And I know what I don't know. I figure that covers pretty much everything.
Sometimes when I sit outside staring into the desert I see birds fly by. If it is black and goes "Caw", I assume it is a crow. If it is brown, I assume it is a hawk. If it is black and says, "Nevermore", I assume it is a raven.
I read in the paper that the average American uses 244 gallons of water per day. I use 20 gallons per week. That could explain why I have no friends when I camp.
A Mesa is a city in Arizona. A butte is Heather Locklear.
Mooey guapa: a good looking cow.
I was able to keep up with my e-mail last winter in Parker and in Quartzsite. The libraries in those towns let us Snowbirds use their computers to access the Internet for thirty minutes at a time. That was enough time for me to read most of my e-mail but left little, if any, time to compose replies. Sometimes I would get the same Internet jokes and inspirational stories from as many as three different sources. But I would like to hear from you if you feel like it at datelineaquarius@yahoo.com. If you don't feel like it, I don't want to hear from you.
I liked my campsite west of Earp, California. I was the only camper around. I liked that isolation. Yet off to the south I could see the lights of the Colorado River Indian Tribe Reservation. That I found somewhat comforting at night, like I wasn't totally alone. No matter where I am the trailer is a constant. It is familiar and feels like home.
I didn't really do that well last winter. I don't see much sense in telling you about it, however. Though by March 1, I decided that I had to get my energy/spirit back real soon or I would be dead. However, I didn't know how to do that. I just knew that it didn't involve ritual, thoughts or doing anything. I likened it to crossing the River Styx into the Underworld, retrieving my spirit and bringing it back with me. I spent about three weeks sitting outside attempting to retrieve my spirit. I can't describe what I did. I, of course, did not succeed. After about three weeks I didn't do it any more. It is not that I decided not to. It is not that I tired of doing it. It is more that the whole concept of doing it disappeared. During that time, however, I did have some very interesting dreams involving dream symbols which I associate with my High Self/Inner Spirit.
In the ensuing weeks I was left with the attitude that whatever is going to happen will happen. And I have no idea what that is. I have enough money left for three more years, barring any large and unexpected expenditures. If my energy/spirit hasn't returned by then, I will merely lay down and die. I don't care which scenario happens. It is beyond my ability to do anything about.
My older brother, Ed, was again to be in Phoenix on business and wanted me to meet him there on March 27. That would have been during the time I was camped 35 miles west of Bouse. So instead of moving west, I moved 30 miles to the east, closer to Phoenix. I camped four miles south of Wenden, AZ, also close to Salome, four miles to the west of Wenden. I had thought of camping there when I first came to the low desert, just to do something different. But in October they had had six inches of rain and had a devastating flood in a normally dry wash. One third of the population had been evacuated for a week and one migrant farm worker drowned. Most of the crops were also destroyed. I figured the energy there wouldn't be too good for a while so I went on to Bouse.
When I camped there in March the energy was still pretty bad. One way for me to tell, outside of feeling pretty damn miserable, is that my eyes burn. My eyes never burn from lack of sleep; just due to "bad" energy, which I will briefly define as any negative emotion: pain, hurt, loss, grief, hatred, anger, etc.. The day after I got there I wanted to leave but being there knocked 100 miles off my round trip to Phoenix. So I put up with it for eight days. But the day after I visited my brother, I left.
As usual, I did enjoy my visit with my brother. It is one of the few times I ever get to talk one on one with a member of my family. Usually I see them only all at once.
On March 14 Spring arrived. It had been low 60's and in three day it was upper 80's. With no humidity that is not bad. It was just sudden to go from being cold all of the time to being hot. Though it made the mornings and evenings much more comfortable.
In early April I swear Mercury must have been very retrograde. Mercury is the planet which governs communication. Basketball announcers were mispeaking every other sentence and not correcting themselves, as they do when Mercury is not retrograde. Also, try to have a conversation with someone and you would swear the Tower of Babel had returned. What they said had no relation to what I had just told them. Ask a clerk if they carry some auto part or trailer part and they look at you like what spaceship did you just get off . And if they do give you the part it will be the wrong one. Mercury is retrograde for five weeks and then moves forward (?grade) for five weeks. It is on a ten week cycle; five forward and five backward. So it happens all of the time, but never as bad as then.
In Arizona there is a Tonto National Forest but no Lone Ranger National Forest. I wonder why not? Is this reverse discrimination, maybe?
This man goes for a physical exam. The doctor tells him he is fat and needs to lose weight. The man says he wants a second opinion. So the doctor tells him he's ugly, too.
One thing the attempt to retrieve my Spirit in March did not do is improve my sense of humor. So you're safe. I know y'all were worried. Gosh. What if he becomes enlightened and loses that great sense of humor? Don't worry. The first thing you do when you become enlightened is to burst out laughing because you now get the joke. The joke is on you. You thought you were separate from God. And now you realize you ARE God and could never have been separated from yourself.
I stayed in Bouse for another 12 days. At the back of my journal I keep a running log of things to talk about in these letters. There was nothing for this time period. So I went back and read my journal. Apparently I was in a lot of mental, physical, and emotional pain during this time. I had lots of trouble sleeping and then couldn't wake up during the day. I was tired all of the time, my body hurt and I didn't do anything except hike.
I left for Show Low on April 9. A cold front was coming through. It had been in the 90's. I got to Ed and Lisa's driveway about 6 that evening. It was cold. It got down to 20 degrees overnight. It had been 93 degrees the day before in Bouse. The next day it snowed five inches. I don't know why it has to snow on me in Show Low in April. But it is not my fault. Ed and Lisa are friends of mine whom I met through Barb before she left for New York. Ed is an excellent mechanic. I wanted him to check the brakes on my van and my trailer before I headed up north. This was the first time I had camped at their place. They live at the west end of Show Low and the forest is not far away.
I don't know why they like me, but they seem to. I am afraid to ask them for fear that they may realize that they don't really like me after all. They are too nice to me to risk that. I couldn't watch the NBA playoffs while I was there. It was too forested for me to get any satellite TV reception and Lisa and 8 year old Hallee rule the TV in that household and they don't like basketball so I was out of luck. I was there ten days. It stayed very cold for the first week I was there.
Ed had gone into business for himself as an auto mechanic after the building of the company he had been working for burned down and they decided not to rebuild it, making him work outside. Ed started a mobile repair service. The day before Ed was to check my brakes I got up and noticed that nobody was home. It looked like someone had run into the garage door and put a hole in it, though it had been boarded up. It wasn't until late that night that I found out that a pickup under which Ed had been working had fallen off the blocks holding it up and onto his chest. He was pinned under the truck and couldn't get out. A friend was there and he couldn't pull Ed out either. Finally Ed had to lift the truck like a barbell and slide out from under it.
The reason the truck fell on Ed is something we all should be aware of. He had put on the emergency brakes and jacked the back of the truck up to unhook the transmission. The emergency brakes work only on the back wheels. Once he had disconnected the transmission, there was nothing connected to the emergency brakes. THEREFORE, if you have to jack up either rear wheel, be sure to block the front wheels so the car cannot roll. I didn't know that. Now WE do.
He was in the hospital for two days. No broken bones or internal injuries; just lots of bruised muscles and cartilage. He was a sore puppy. The doctors told him not to lift anything heavier than 5 pounds and to expect to be out of work from 3 to 6 months. Of course he had no insurance for hospital bills or lost wages.
This happened on a Thursday and by Monday morning a friend of Ed's from Phoenix, Mighty Joe Young, who is now in business for himself as a computer consultant but used to own his own mechanic shop, was at Ed's to keep the business going until Ed could get back on his back. Ed could stand up (though not lift anything) but couldn't get under a car where much of the work is done. Joe was a lifesaver.
On Wednesday, with Ed supervising, Joe and I took off, one by one, all of the tires on my van and trailer to check the brakes. They were okay. I was especially concerned about the brakes as I hadn't had them looked at for two years and I had severely overheated them in Phoenix. Joe did repair an axle seal leak on the right rear wheel. We repacked the wheel bearings on the trailer and I got to help. I ended up with grease under my fingernails like a real mechanic. I washed my hands and then went to Safeway with the grease still stuck under my fingernails to show everybody that I was a real man, I had grease under my fingernails. I carried a roll of duct tape just to make sure they noticed. I did get whistled at; but it was a cop directing traffic. (Tim Allen of Home Improvement said real men use duct tape.)
We got finished in time for me to move to Shari's driveway that afternoon. It was barely in time for Shari and I to watch the Phoenix Suns beat the Utah Jazz 98 to 93. Greg Ostertag is a backup center for Utah. He is a Kansas graduate. Although he is 7' 2" and 280 pounds, I have always considered him my boy. He hasn't done that well. A couple of years ago he was a starter but got demoted because he wasn't doing too well. But this night he got to play almost the whole game and had his best game ever! I still have the box score. 10 of 11 shots made, 25 total points, 11 rebounds, 2 blocked shots, 40 of 48 minutes played. That's my boy!
Natural gas prices were very high that Spring. So I asked both Ed and Shari how much they paid for Natural Gas. They each said their HIGHEST natural gas bill for the coldest month was $62-$65. My parents' highest bill in KC was $348. So much for short supplies. The supplies are short wherever they can get the most money. Thank goodness Bush and Cheney are on our side.
Over the winter and continuing while I was there, Shari was having a health crisis. Robert and Ginger also seemed to have been sick most of the winter. (Karen said many more people than usual in Bouse had pneumonia/bronchitis this past winter, too.) But on the days Shari felt okay and didn't have to work we visited, watched movies and had a great time. When it wasn't raining or snowing, I went for hikes. It was so good to get into the mountains and the trees again. I had been in the low desert for 5 1/2 months.
While in Show Low, Shari took me to a new store called Whispering Spirit. I really liked the owner, Jeri. She took my crystals and some other things I had for sale on consignment. It is a lovely store with really good energy. Her website is whisperingspirit.bizland.com.
There is a syndicated radio show on one of the stations in Show Low which plays only 60's music without the emphasis on Elvis and the Beattles. I love listening to it. It takes me back to the land of my youth. I can also hear it in Yuma and Parker. It is worth going there just because of the music. And in Show Low it is non stop, commercial free after 10 PM. What's not to like?
All summer of 2000 in Lavina, whenever I played basketball (which I love doing) all I could do was bang the ball off the front of the goal. I never could find a way to get the ball over the edge of the rim. Back in Shari's driveway, though, I could again swish those shots. I love the sound a basket makes when the ball swishes through it. It is the sound of success, the sound of joy.
Robert was planning on walking from Lavina, MT to the Statue of Liberty in NYC. His departure date was May 26. I figured that if I was going to go to Lavina this summer I had better get there in time to visit with Robert before he left. So I left Show Low on April 30 and arrived in Lavina on May 2. I took I-25 from Albuquerque. The prettiest part of the drive was from Raton, NM to Trinidad, CO. You have to go over an 8000 foot mountain pass and the scenery is beautiful. It would be even prettier if I did not have to fight to maintain even 35 mph, pulling the trailer.
By the time I got to Lavina, Robert was in Mitchell, SD caring for his terminally ill father. I visited with Ginger, hiked and re-acquainted myself with the local folks. Jennifer, on whose land I was camping, had also left two days earlier to care for her non-terminally ill mother.
Rose had discovered half.com where you can buy things at half price or less. She had ordered some books for me. I got a couple of recent bestsellers for $3 each because the sellers bid each other down so they can sell theirs first. It was great!
In talking to Robert on the phone this spring he told me he was having some physical problems and felt very emotional about them. I felt like he was going through an internal transition of some kind that obviously involved his emotions. Instead of processing things in his usual mental manner, he was experiencing a lot of things emotionally instead. He said that it felt like his head got kicked in the butt.
I spent a relatively quiet three weeks waiting for Robert to get back. I watched a lot of NBA playoffs. In one series my team was down two games to one going into game four. They had to win game four to bring the series to two to two, or you could say tutu tutu. Or you could leave it unsaid. But I can't.
Graduation day at the Lavina School was May 18. I attended the ceremony and saw 6 seniors and 10 eighth graders graduate. After the ceremony Dave and Janie Brown had an outdoor barbeque. I try not to miss these because there is LOTS of food and lots of friendly people there. This was no exception. These parties are always special and I didn't get home until 1 AM. Obviously I had a good time.
The three year long drought in Montana had continued. May was normal temperatures and dry. Sunny and 60's made for very pleasant weather. There were no bugs so I put up my hammock swing. The frame for it looks like a gallows. It is a seven foot sawhorse, basically. The hammock chair hangs from the center of it. I find it extremely relaxing. For some reason I hadn't put it up for two years. Give me ten minutes swinging in that hammock and I am totally relaxed. I spent most of my afternoons there listening to tapes of my 60's music. I was content.
I had been planning to go to KC to visit my family in mid June. Suddenly it occurred to me I should go now rather than wait for Robert to get back. So I left on May 24. I keep thinking it is a 22 hour drive, but it only takes 18. I left at 11 AM and would have arrived at my sister's at 5 AM the next day, so I stopped at a rest stop to read a book for three hours. So I arrived at 8 AM instead. My sister and brother-in-law had partied the night before so I woke them up when I got there. For some reason the drive (I left my trailer in Lavina) wears me out. So by arriving so early in the day, I am dead-ass tired and worthless until I can go to bed that night. Some day I may figure this timing thing out and arrive in the evening. Do not hold your breath.
Since I had last been to my sister's house, they had fixed up their 2200 square foot basement. They had a kitchen/wet bar/pool room; an exercise room with ping pong table; several large closets filled with twelve packs of soda pop. We are talking at least 50 to 60 twelve packs here. There were two refrigerators filled with pop also. There was a large bathroom and then--the Theater Room. They had a 61 inch screen TV hooked up to the full DirecTV package. It was two weeks before they could get me to leave. There are also three other TV's in the basement; two in the pool room and one in the exercise room. In all Mark and Jeanne and their two children have nine TV's in the house. If they turned them all on at once they could affect the Nielson ratings.
There were some things I had to do while in KC. I have lifetime front end alignment from Firestone which I always take care of there as I have to use a company store, not a franchisee. I also had to buy some new satellite TV equipment. My brother-in-law knew a guy and I spent a lot of time waiting for him to show up. Then I had to call DirecTV and find somebody who knew what they were talking about so I could set my system up properly. All of this probably took a total of 24 hours over a ten day period. But finally I succeeded.
I also spent 2 1/2 days re-roofing my Dad's garage. He had tried to find a professional to do it but couldn't find anybody who would even consider such a small job. My brother-in-law, Mark, helped me a lot as did my 17 year old nephew, David. I do know how to roof as I spent three summers while in college working for a roofing company and have helped re-roof a couple of houses. All of these things kept me pretty busy so I did not have much time to see my friends in KC. In fact I didn't see most of them.
For several years I have noticed that I have no internal validity for my outer reality. I doubt I can explain this so anyone could understand. You would have to have experienced this in order to understand it. I first noticed it in 1995 while working in Lincoln. When I left my motel room in the morning I did not know if I was dressed properly for work or not; or whether I was dressed at all. If I passed the front desk and they didn't look at me funny then I figured I was okay. As it was, I did okay. I forgot deodorant and/or after shave many times, but that was okay. I once forgot to shave but as I was leaving my room I happened to rub my face and noticed the stubs. My point is that I think I know what I am doing but I can't tell. It's like I am not there.
I experienced this while re-roofing my Dad's garage, too. I can tap into other people's energy and use there validation. But if I am on my own, I am lost. While Mark was there (he has worked construction) I knew what I was doing. Even while it was just my architect sister up there with me pounding nails, I knew what I was doing. While Anne Marie probably doesn't know how to roof a garage, she knows how it should be done from an architect's perspective. But when neither of them were there I didn't know if I was doing it correctly or not. I would do the work and it looked okay, but I didn't know for sure. I just did the best I could and figured when Mark showed up again he would know if I had done something wrong and we could fix it. The interesting thing is that I know more about roofing than Mark does. Unfortunately, David knows nothing about construction work so he was not able to ground me in this. It takes someone who knows what they are doing.
This has been a problem for me for years. It is one reason I pretty much stick to myself and don't do anything unless I have to. If something goes wrong with my trailer or van, I do not even try to fix it as I usually only make it worse. For years I have known that I could and did tap into the energy of other people for my own use. I can't think my way out of a paper bag. Yet I can hold a fairly intelligent conversation with someone who is intelligent and mentally oriented. I can feel when I am around an emotional person who is open to their own feelings. But I can't think or feel on my own. I am cut off from my own ability to think and feel.
No one understands this or believes me and I am not sure why I am saying this now. I do know that some of my friends are starting to feel very uncomfortable when they are in crowds or go into large cities. So maybe it has some relevance for someone. So be it.
During my two weeks in KC I slept in three different places; in an upstairs bedroom which is also Mark's office, in the basement on a recliner/couch, and on a big air mattress in the basement. While I was there it rained a lot and the basement carpet got wet when the drain at the bottom of the stairs of the walk out basement got clogged. We spent a week drying out the carpet. They had a party in their basement five days after the flood so Mark had to work very hard to get the carpet dried out in time.
Mark had also just bought a new Gateway computer and had had Roadrunner Internet Connection installed. He couldn't get Roadrunner to work properly even though he spent hours trying to do so. After several hours on the phone with customer service with both Roadrunner and Gateway, he was told he had to bring the computer in to Gateway and they would have to re-format it. Before he did that he turned on the computer and saw a flash that said to reset computer hit return key. He did so and was told by the computer that he could return to any format within the last five days and the computer would be configured as it had been that day. So he told the computer to go back to a time before he had begun to have problems with Roadrunner. The computer did so and all problems disappeared and everything worked as it was supposed to. End of problem. Mercury must have still been in retrograde.
No matter what goes wrong, Mark never gets upset; he just deals with it. Outside of my Dad, Mark is the nicest man I have ever known. Actually, all of my family are pretty wonderful. Except for me they are all normal and we all get along well together and always have.
Some of my friends tell me that Flouride in the water does funny things to people. While in KC I noticed many drivers talking on cell phones. I went to Sam's Club and saw several people pushing shopping carts while talking on cell phones. Mark and Jeanne have five cell phones; one for each member of the family and one for Mark's business. One day I was in the kitchen talking to Mark when his cell phone rang. It was Jeanne from upstairs. She had a question for him. Now I know from a lifetime of experience that her voice would carry all the way downstairs, but we live in different times these days. So I decided that the Flouride in the KC water made people buy cell phones. It may be the same in other cities or there may be local variants of the Flouride Effect. They grew accustomed to her face so they took her picture and sent her on her way.
While in KC I did get to attend two Royals baseball games. Actually, two in a row. I went Wednesday night and then Thursday afternoon. The Royals won both, which is rare because they are having a lousy season. But it was good to be at the ballpark where in previous years I have seen hundreds of games. My 85 year old Dad bought a beer at the ballpark and had his ID checked. Apparently it is a new rule; they have to check everybody's ID. We were in the middle of the row. My Dad got his wallet out and and flashed his driver's license and that was good enough. The vendor couldn't possibly have seen anything on it, though my Dad's gray hair should have been enough. It is a stupid rule and I wonder how long it will last. If someone with arthritis has to stand up to get his wallet out of his hip pocket, he won't buy much beer.
My parents are pretty special people. They have been married almost 60 years. Though they both look younger than 60 years of age. My mother is very creative. After raising six children she went back to college and got her degree and then a master's degree in Fine Arts. She was active in the local theater as an actress for a while. She taught herself how to play the guitar and the banjo and then gave lessons. She taught herself to paint first by using paint-by-numbers and then freestyle and continued painting until her eyesight went. She has an excellent singing voice and still is active with a group called The Entertainers who perform several times a week for nursing homes.
My Dad is the smartest man in the world. Just like Phil in Lavina, he could fix anything. He is creative in a practical way. He worked as an engineer at an army ammunition plant and retired as the plant Manager. He could fix anything around the house or on the car. When I bought my house and something wouldn't work, I called him up and he would always come over and fix it for me. He taught me things about life that I still use on a daily basis. He is a
Taurus and family is very important to him. He would do anything for his wife or his children. After he retired he would cook once a week for a soup kitchen. He also volunteered to drive a group of retarded people on their weekly outing. At 85 he remains busy doing things for other people. I could go on and on about how wonderful my parents are but I'll stop now and keep you wanting more.
While in KC I stopped at a storefront psychic's office for a reading. I walked in the door and saw a sign that said, "Think of a number and take a seat." When my number came up, I went into her office. I asked her how do I know you are really psychic? She said, "I knew you were going to say that."
Although I spent two weeks in KC, I had very little time to myself or to visit with my friends there. Anyway, after the first week there all I could do was to only live for the moment I could leave. I did leave on June 8. Halfway to Lincoln, Nebraska I felt a thousand times better. I could breathe again and I felt as though a 500 pound block of cement had been lifted from my chest and solar plexus.
It is interesting (well, it is to me) the way I feel and experience the energies in the different cities I have to go to. During the occasional weeks I camped in Bouse (pop. 2,000) I felt extremely uneasy and it got worse the longer I stayed there. Though to come in for a paper and talk to Karen doesn't seem to bother me.
In Lavina (pop. 201) I feel very lethargic, invaded and under attack, though it is not as severe, certainly, as other places. I also tend to withdraw and stay to myself. In KC I feel totally overwhelmed and shut down. My body hurts the entire time I am there, especially in the gut and solar plexus areas. But all of my muscles and joints hurt, also, for as long as I am there.
In Lincoln I get shut down mentally and emotionally. In downtown Lincoln I feel attacked by a violent and very negative energy. When I worked in downtown Lincoln I noticed I would begin to come down almost as if I were sobering up about 4 PM every day. I could begin to think better then. It took me several weeks after I first noticed this to realize that is the time when people start to leave work and go home. This is what convinced me without a doubt that I pick up other peoples' energies.
When I drive through Phoenix I shut down totally and can't breathe until I get outside of the city. In the Show Low area (pop. about 30,000) I get withdrawn, I can't talk and I have the constant feeling that something is wrong. In Billings (pop. 80,000) I feel very uneasy, under attack, sick in my gut and faint. I often can't get all of my errands run because I have to leave. I am seldom in the city more than three hours.
There are perhaps subtle but distinct differences in how I feel in each of these cities. You could blindfold me and take me to any one of these places and after two hours there I could probably tell you which one I was in. All of these energies express in my body. I could tell by how and where my body hurt where I was. And that's the truth as we have it by one Jim Kinerk. (Or two, if you consider he's schizophrenic.)
While in KC I did get to see "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" at the theater. I loved it. It was subtitled. In Lincoln I saw it on DVD dubbed into English and loved it again. It is a great movie. The story is good, the martial arts fantastic and I enjoyed the mysticism of it. Two thumbs up.
Ticks don't bite IRS agents due to professional courtesy.
On June 9 I got to see all of my Lincoln New Age friends except for Amy and Lawrence. We all met at Valentino's for dinner. They have the best food in the world. It is my favorite place to eat, though Lincoln does have some good eateries. Lawrence had found his dream woman on the internet and had moved to Indiana. Amy and Jack were on vacation.
As always I accepted the wonderful hospitality of Matt and Erin. When I go to Lincoln that is the place to stay; either in my trailer in their driveway or in their guest bedroom, as was the case this time.
I also had the pleasure of visiting with Heather for one whole afternoon. This was special as I had heard that she was moving to Denver. And while I remember sitting on the swing on her porch talking with her, I can't remember what we talked about so I don't know if she is in Denver now or not. Unfortunately this is happening most of the time now. I remember talking to someone but cannot remember what was said. I am real good at keeping secrets.
Her son, Griff, graduated from high school and now plays professional ice hockey in the USHL for the Rochester (MN) Mustangs. She is a very proud hockey mom. All of her time and sacrifices have paid off.
I also got to visit with Kay for most of one afternoon. Matt and Erin were having a party that evening so I had to be gone. Kay and her boyfriend were playing golf that evening. So I not so subtlely dropped the hint that I needed a place to watch the NBA playoff game that evening. Kay gracefully picked it up and offered her place. Aren't friends wonderful!?
On Monday I went to visit my friends at Lincoln Benefit Life at their new building at the east edge of town. A few of us went to lunch. Afterward I spent an hour talking to more friends at their desks. I would liked to have said hello to more of them but I can't remember names. Of course with the passage of time, that gets worse and worse; age and time.
I stayed until Tuesday evening so I could visit with Amy and Jack who got back from vacation the previous evening. They were married last November and are doing very well. I just wish I could have spent more time with them. I know! I know! I always want more. But that is what drives our economy.
I left for Lavina the next morning. Just in case you were wondering, I am going to expound some here for a while. For those of you who don't like expoundment, please skip the next paragraph. That is all it will take. I am low on expoundment at the moment but may find some later on. I miss the intense immulsion into Metaphysics and things New Age which I experienced when I lived in KC and visited Sedona, the New Age capital of the country. The friends I have now are New Age but, gosh, there aren't any seminars, psychic fairs, group meditations, sightings of UFO's, channelings, deep emotional sharings and stuff like that. I really miss that. Almost as much as I miss my mind. I didn't need a mind for things like that. Just being and feeling.
While in KC I went to see an Occultist for a reading. He gave me glasses. I told him that was not why I had come. He replied that I obviously came to the right place. (I admit that is a tough one. Does anyone get it? Think about it. When you do get it send me a postcard.)
When I got back to Lavina the rear side door of my van got stuck, locked, in the open position. Meaning I couldn't close either rear side door. Nor could I drive it anywhere because the wind would blow the door open. I was in a quandary. It was a familiar place. I had been back five days when Phil Horton showed up saying he had heard my door was broken. 45 minutes later he had the problem fixed. The man can do anything. He's amazing.
While in Quartzsite with George I bought a used 500 watt generator. When I finally got around to using it, it wouldn't produce any electricity. I took it to a small engine repair shop in Parker. They said it would cost $300 to repair and then it may not produce any electricity. It wasn't worth fixing. By this time three weeks had passed and the flea market vendor who had sold it to me had moved on. I was going to throw it away and figure it for a $180 loss. But then I thought of Phil. So I kept it until I got to Lavina. Phil fixed it for $11.80 in parts. He refused to accept the $60 I tried to thrust on him, but did settle for a free breakfast at the cafe and $12 for parts.
Phil's wife, Kaye, got tired of her low pay as the Lavina School math teacher and low Montana pension, so she quit and found a job in Texas with a 55% pay increase and better pension benefits. She had taught in the Texas school system earlier for ten years so she had some vesting already. They left the first of August. Lavina is poorer for the loss of them. Kaye was very active in the school's extra-curricular activities, mainly because nobody else would. And Phil probably repaired or built something for every one of the county's 900 residents. I know he did a lot for me and refused to charge me for any of it.
I thought I was going to have to go through the summer without getting to mix any concrete. But when I heard that Phil had to pour a concrete basement step at his rental house I begged him to let me mix the concrete. Fortunately, he did. I may have to retire those leather gloves, now. They are worn out and were used only for mixing concrete in Lavina. This was the only time I got to mix concrete in Lavina this year.
When I got back to Lavina, Robert had returned from Mitchell, S.D.. His father had finally passed away. It was good to see my friend again. He decided to cancel his walk to New York because of the late start and because he was still having vague pains in his chest and lower back. And I was pleased to see that due to his physical complaints, Robert had adopted my lifestyle, reported in an earlier letter. He now woke up and took the dogs for a walk, took a nap, ate lunch, took a nap, worked on his computer, ate dinner, fed the dogs and went to bed. We had more in common now than ever before. He also earned three more titles this summer: Dog Man of Lavina, the Giant Napping Head, and The Napster.
Robert had one dog which he inherited from Ginger. Leo, who belonged to Dave and Janie Brown, adopted Robert. Leo adores Robert and follows him everywhere. When Robert goes out of town for a few hours, Leo goes to Robert's Rocky Mountain Garage and sits in front of the door until Robert returns. Terry and Glenna also have two dogs and whenever they leave town Robert looks after them. So it is not uncommon to see Robert walking four dogs on the gravel roads around Lavina. It is also interesting to note that the dogs pay attention to what he says about as much as he pays attention to what I say. Talk about instant karma!
Once back in Lavina I set up my new satellite system. I now have two dishes to point at two different satellites. I couldn't find either signal. I spent hours on it. Finally Terry was helping me without much success when Glenna said the fairies had been insulted because someone had stepped on a mushroom and that is where fairies live. Immediately thereafter Terry blew some dirt out of one of the connections and we found the signal. Then we were able to find the other signal also.
The next day both signals were gone and I couldn't find them. I called the cable guy who had sold me the equipment and left a message on his voice mail. When I called back two days later his cell phone number had been disconnected. He was a friend of my brother-in-law, but he and my sister and their two children had just left on a two week vacation. I tried and tried and sometimes I could get a signal and sometimes not. This went on for three weeks until I bought all new cable and connectors. Since then I have had a steady signal. But the cable guy is still missing. During all of this frustration I would have gone crazy but I realized that I already was.
It had rained the two weeks prior to my return. In fact the last three hours of my drive were in rain. However, the rain stopped when I got back. Montana has been in a drought for four years and all of the reservoirs and rivers are at levels between 10 and 40% of normal. In fact, the Yellowstone River which runs through Billings is at an all time low. The Musselshell River which is just south of Lavina has run dry 100 miles downstream from Lavina. But with this rain came the humidity and the mosquitoes. Normally the humidity here is very low. This year it was quite high along with the temperature. The humidity stayed high until the end of July. The humidity is usually so low that neither the TV or newspaper weather reports make any mention of it. Normally, it is quite windy in Montana. This year there was only a slight breeze from the south instead of the steady wind from the west. Fortunately with all of the things that have gone wrong with my trailer, I am grateful that the air conditioner has never failed me. It is the same size they use on bigger trailers and keeps me nice and cool when I am hooked up to electricity.
The mosquitoes were so bad that even dousing myself in OFF insect repellent didn't help on my hikes. They just bit right through it. But by mid August they were gone and I wasn't. So I guess I'm tougher than those old mosquitoes!
Ten days after I got back from KC, Robert and I went to Billings for groceries and stuff. I still hadn't recovered from the KC energy yet. Robert and I both had a difficult time handling the energy in Billings. Wal-Mart was our first stop. We both had to sit in the car and rest for fifteen minutes before we could go on. That night in my trailer, about 10:30, I started screaming and I couldn't stop. I screamed as loud as I could. I couldn't help it and I couldn't stop. It lasted about thirty minutes. Suddenly I didn't have to scream anymore. I didn't feel any better or worse. I just didn't have to scream anymore.
Last winter I had felt that there would be a lot of changes coming this summer. I didn't know whether that pertained to Lavina or the world at large. It is still too soon to tell. But as we shall see, there was turmoil and change in Lavina this summer. It has been such an exciting summer I hardly know where to begin. Several times I went to the Slayton Mercantile, which I can see from my trailer, for a bag of popcorn to eat while I watched a movie in my trailer. Occasionally I would go to the Mercantile for a frozen yogurt cone, usually opting for a swirl of both flavors of the day. I am so daring! Once I even got up early enough to go to the cafe for breakfast before they stopped serving it at 11 AM. Even today few people actually believe I accomplished that awesome feat.
My friends were in and out of town all summer either on vacation or caring for ill loved ones. Ginger was back visiting in New York when, on the evening of July 7, Robert knocked on my door. Blood was pouring from his right hand. He had been giving Little Bear a bath when she obviously didn't want one and had bitten him. He had several deep puncture wounds and a skin-deep tear in the webbing of his right thumb. At last I could use my Y2K First Aid Kit which I had assembled two years previously. Am I a Boy Scout or what!? We used hydrogen peroxide to sterilize the wounds, butterfly bandages to hold the tears together and lots of gauze and tape to keep the wounds clean and stable. Robert healed incredibly quickly and within three days was bandage free. This was the first time I ever played doctor for a doctor. (For those of you who have forgotten, Robert is an M.D.)
At this time I want to thank all of my friends who went to such great lengths to make this letter more exciting, since I lead a pretty simple and boring life. In particular I would like to thank Ed in Show Low and Robert in Lavina. Without friends like them, this would be just another boring family (of one) Christmas letter. Speaking of Ed, I called him in mid July and he said that he was healed completely, despite the doctors telling him he wouldn't be able to work for six months. He had been back to work as a mobile mechanic full time for a month. His business was growing daily and he was as busy as he could be. He was planning on buying a 4 bedroom house ten miles outside Show Low on 11 acres with a large barn he could use as a shop. He thought he could buy it for only ten thousand dollars more than he could sell his house in Show Low for. Things are really looking up for him and his wife, Lisa. And I couldn't be happier for them, especially as their new home has full RV hookups. Not that that means anything, of course. I just thought I'd throw that in. Though as of this writing I don't know if the deal has gone through or not. But I promise you that by the time I get to Arizona, I'll know.
Early in July I got a letter from Texas telling me to report to jury duty in one week and a letter from State Farm Insurance wanting to know where in Kansas my trailer is located so they can send an independent company to inspect it. Well, I am never in Texas and my trailer is never in Kansas. I wrote to Texas telling them I just use Texas as a mailing address as I am a full time RV'er. So far I haven't heard from them or seen any Texas Rangers. I told State Farm that I am retired and take lots of trips in my RV and I don't know where it will be during the next year, when the inspection will take place. I told them that if they would give me 30 days notice I'd let them know where it would be. I haven't heard from them yet, either. I just hope they are happy.
Beercrats: two drunks in a bar talking politics.
She was so pretty I gave her a sucker. That's right, a sucker for a pretty face.
Waterloo: an outhouse for ice fishermen. Other changes in Lavina that summer were that a man whom I had met and who is a friend of Robert's was investigated by 6 DEA agents and two Sheriffs for growing marijuana on his 320 acres of land 15 miles outside of Lavina. That was a month ago as of this writing (8-22-01) and as yet he has not been charged or arrested.
Also, Ginger decided to move back to New York and run a new massage clinic a friend of hers is starting as an expansion of an existing business. She left on August 23. Her many friends in Lavina will miss her. Ginger was kind of the social center for a lot of people in Lavina. Many people, men and women, would often stop by to chat. I met a lot of people by stopping in myself. She had also made a lot of people feel better by her healing massages. This is a traditional community and massage is considered a non-traditional therapy. But she had made substantial inroads in this area and had changed many peoples' minds by her healing, therapeutic work.
My landlord, Jennifer, finally showed up for a week with her new boyfriend, David, the end of July. Jennifer still has wonderful energy and David is very nice, too. Unfortunately I had little time to talk to either of them as I usually saw them in a crowd of people. It is hard for me to talk and get to know someone in a crowd of people. But what I did get left me wanting more. One night David, who is a wonderful cook, cooked a salmon dinner for about 12 of us. There was a lot of Goddess energy amongst the women who were there. They got into bloody marys and sat out in front of Jennifer's house (a former church) and laughed and talked until late in the night. It was quite the scandal and there were a few goddesses who weren't feeling quite themselves the next day! But they said -to a woman- that as near as they can remember, they had a great time.
One day I had to go to Billings to run some errands. One of them was to go to Goodwill and buy some more short sleeve shirts. For years I have had trouble finding any I liked, but got lucky this time and found five I really liked. The five of them came to only $18. The woman at the checkout stand was short, slight of build and timid. She said something I could not hear so I asked her to repeat herself. Again I couldn't hear a word. And again I told her that I couldn't hear her. This time she spoke up and said, "Are you a senior citizen?" I said I wasn't but she only charged me $15. I guess she figured if I was that hard of hearing that I must be lying about my age. Myself, I thought it very funny that I had such trouble hearing that particular question!
On July 13, Mike Beck had a concert in Robert's garage to introduce his new CD. Mike is a singing cowboy troubadour and a resident of Lavina. He travels throughout the country for his gigs and is especially popular in the Scandinavian countries. He is a very good performer and I and the rest of the audience enjoyed his show and appreciated his performance in our tiny town.
Robert had a show and pot luck dinner at his Rock Mountain Garage on July 29 to say goodby to Phil and Kay Horton. He asked if I wanted to perform and I said no. But he asked me to MC the program and introduce the performers. He said that all I would have to do was read what he had written about each performer. Two days before the show he also said he wanted me to tell jokes between performers. Oops. Trapped again. I culled a few jokes from this Trip Letter and searched through the six inches of e-mail jokes that George had sent me over the last few years until I found some funny bumper sticker jokes. I figured I wouldn't need many.
Unfortunately 3 of the six performers didn't show. In an effort to stretch the performance out so it would seem like a real show I told some more jokes. But they are a tough audience. Personally, I think I did very well. And I think I look good in rotten tomatoes.
At the end of the show Robert had me ask if anyone had anything to say to the Hortons. Several people did and there were few dry eyes in the house. After the performance I met a woman named Red Hawk. Phil had met her the day before in Roundup and invited her to the show. She has lived several miles east of Lavina for three "winters", but did not know any of the New Age community that is in and around Lavina. She has a wonderful energy and her face positively radiates with love and spirit. She is powerful, knowing, gentle and sensitive. She said she tends to keep to herself and doesn't like the energy of cities. She is a Reiki Master and uses several other healing modalities. She also has taken classes in ceramics which Rose is also interested in. I hope to get to know her better in the future.
One day Steve came by and asked me to follow him out to the house of a mechanic who lives on Dean Creek Road. This mechanic owed Steve money. He had agreed to work on Steve's truck two weeks ago but is a drunk and had never showed up. Steve was leaving on vacation the next day and wanted Larry to fix his truck before he got back from vacation. Steve couldn't find Larry anywhere and was convinced that he was hiding from him, as all of Larry's vehicles were there. By this time Steve was livid with rage and his face was red and his neck veins were bulging. He spent five minutes telling me just how he was going to Kill Larry if his truck wasn't fixed by the time he got back. Then he calmed down and apologized to me. He said he had tried to find someone else to follow him out there because he didn't want to subject me to the anticipated anger. Then he called me a good man and a good friend. I was deeply touched by all of this. And now Steve brings me home grown tomatoes from his dad's garden in Billings. What a guy!
My friends tell me that I lie a lot. I like to think of it as creating alternate realities.
My income ain't fixed. It's broke.
A cannibal's favorite shampoo is Head and Shoulders.
Did you hear about the cannibal who only ate finger food?
How many Rednecks does it take to change a light bulb? None.
I am older that dirt. In fact I invented dirt. (Co-credit goes to Al Gore.)
When I was young I had thick skin physically. Now I have thick skin psychologically. I wish I could have both.
I went to the cafe for lunch on August 7. 25 minutes after the waitress took my order, I was the only one in the cafe and the cook came out to sit at the counter and read a paper. I still hadn't been served. I was just about to mention something to the waitress when she turned to me, chagrined, and said she forgot to turn in my order. I was in no hurry and went to the post office while my order was cooked. It was ready when I got back. I still tipped my usual dollar. But I had to laugh when I realized that tips stands for "To Insure Prompt Service".
That same evening I caught a plane to KC for a mini family reunion. The energy hurt me real bad there. I did nothing except attend the family gatherings. All my joints and all my muscles hurt the whole time I was there. I couldn't function at all until my fourth day back in Lavina. Several people in Lavina commented on how bad I looked when I got back. Thanks Y'all!
While I was in KC I went with My Dad to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store. I passed a display of Lays potato chips which were on sale. A store-made sign read, "Potatoe chip sale". I couldn't help writing on the sign, "Dan Quayle made this sign". I wished I could have stuck around to see if anyone read what I had written to see their reaction, especially since Kansas is so strongly Republican.
On the trip back to Billings my flight went through Salt Lake City. As I stayed on the plane I watched the luggage handlers take the luggage from the plane's hold and literally throw them onto carts. I had the thought that if I ever took anything fragile with me onto a plane I had better carry it on rather than checking it. I figured I had to be especially careful to carry on my ego. In late July I read in the Billings Gazette that the state of Oregon passed a state law requiring all lawyers to tell the truth in the performance of their duties. They are not allowed to lie or knowingly allow any of their witnesses to lie on the witness stand. This particularly upset the prosecutors. Imagine! They and their witnesses must now tell the truth. What a setback for Justice.
The night before George and I went to Kartchner Caverns we ate at an Italian Restaurant in Benson, Arizona. There I saw a plaque which read: I always cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
I have come to realize that I can get news from the "Doonesbury" comic strip that I can't get anywhere else. True, it is mostly satire, but he reports things that aren't reported in the mainstream news media. George "W" Bush is pushing his Missile Defense System contrary to the 1972 ABM Treaty we signed with Russia. This is an updated version of Reagan's "Star Wars" defense, which we later found out never existed because the technology doesn't exist, even though we had spent over $40 Billion on it. Bush is pushing this despite objections from our enemies as well as our allies. In late June or early July the Pentagon tested this anti-ballistic missile for the fourth time. A dummy war head was shot into the sky and the anti-ballistic missile intercepted it and destroyed it. The first two times this was tested were failures. The third and fourth trials were successes. What Doonesbury says is that ALL FOUR OF THE DUMMY WARHEADS HAD GPS LOCATOR BEACONS IN THEM. Even so, on the first two trials the ABM couldn't find it even with the beacon yelling "here I am"! Last Spring Doonesbury also reported in a week long comic strip that an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey mapped the caribou calving grounds in the Arctic National Refuge and found them to be in the exact locations in which President Bush wanted to dig for oil. The employee was fired. Ten days after I read this in Doonesbury I saw the same report at the bottom of CNN Headline News. But that was the only press I ever saw on it. What else are we not being told? Ha Ha!
One day I was in the Slayton Mercantile waiting to buy popcorn. A young man, 6' 4" tall was also standing there in front of a small refrigerator on top of a pop machine. This refrigerator was on his level three feet in front of his face. On it in large red print was, "Worms for sale." He stood there for several minutes until he could ask the cashier where he could find the fishing bait. She pointed to the refrigerator in front of him and we all burst out laughing. We have all not seen something right in front of our faces but this had to be a classic example. I have received many e-mails from friends telling me that to get rid of junk mail or internet spam I should call a number and give them my social security number and all would be taken care of. I would NEVER do this. Most identity theft comes from someone learning of your social security number. I suggest strongly that you give this number to no one who you do not know. It says right on the card "Not to be used for identification."
Well, it is time to hit the print key. But before I go, I want to ask all of you who receive this letter by snail mail to please send me your e-mail address if you have one at datelineaquarius@yahoo.com. And be sure to visit my website: datelineaquarius.com. By the end of September at the latest I should have some new stuff under the Newsflashes and Musings headings. If you receive this by e-mail, THANK YOU!

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