Saturday, July 23, 2011
hitchin’ / part 1. we started out with a friend over a morning coffee, all packed up with our lives in just a few bags, stop off alongside the 101 in sonoma county, Steele lane onramp by the in-n-out burger. making some signs that read “north,” and “oregon.” we wait about 20 minutes before a young guy with drums and camping gear pulls over, tells us he’s headed all the way to arcata. pretty ideal. he shifts around his stuff in his car to accommodate us and we’re quickly on our way. I’m txting friends along the route, old friends in arcata, grants pass, eugene, and Portland. letting them know we’re on our way. hope to end up in a nice warm place to sleep but I’ve got a sleeping bag and some long johns just in case. carrying around everything I own in one small briefcase and one large backpacker’s pack, on loan from a friend who’d lived out of it for a couple months in europe, good traveling karma. it feels good to be back on the road. listening to world music and one of the sons of fela kuti on the stereo. hurdling up the pretty California landscape, the 101 is such a nicer drive than the 5. we’re doing good time, should land in town after 3 pm some time, should have time to get ahold of people and try to see about staying a night or if we should just try to push it further on to Oregon. it’s good to be moving again after staying in Santa Rosa for nearly a few months, with only brief trips into the city to break it up. the bay area has been good to me, and full of good people who took care of me and supported me emotionally. good times, yet still there comes a point when you have to decide that you really are just visiting and you’re ready to move on. so now I have a traveling partner, a young woman who is content with not knowing where we will end up next, someone excited about the open possibilities inherent in a life lived free of major responsibilities. if we weren’t really doing much in the place we were at, there’s little holding us there and we might as well be anywhere. so we teamed up to pool our collective friendships and have people we can visit, so we’re going to go on this test run and see how it rolls. nothing too strenuous, a good trial at the road life and seeing if you work well together in different contexts. potential for stress, and strange awkward situations that may arise, but it’s your attitude that will take you far. and so far we’ve been getting along famously, everyone of my weirdo friends I have introduced her to have been quite charmed by her. I’m excited to have a partner in crime again, or maybe for the first time, two wily hobos, personable house-guests, commensurate travel buddies. sitting in the back of this silver honda, driven by a nice young guy from New York who landed in San Francisco, on his way to Arcata to camp on vacation and see some world musicians on the campus there for performances and Afro Cuban rhythms and melodies. honkytonky pianos sorta. driving thru redwoods with sand dollars on the dash. he tells us to remember to pee on some roses when we get to portland. “sometimes you gotta stop and piss on the roses,” I say. leave little memorable turns of phrase to associate with a time and place in conversational contexts, something to bind the group mind together and mark the occasion, milestone markers along the passage of time and place in the narrative of life. in-jokes for in-crowds, drawing circles of inclusion so new friends can relate like familiars. tell me a story, where are you from, what are some life goals you might have, the usual run of intense talk you jump into in the instant camaraderie of adventurous living on the frayed edges of common human experience. some company for a drive, bit of gas money, more comfortable than a bus and cheaper and still way more exciting to boot, because of the element of the unknown. excitement abounds. the one thing I’m bummed about is that I left town without my hat. a couple days before our big trip I left my hat in a friend of a friend’s car and it was too inconvenient for her to deliver it to me or meet up with her before we had to leave, so I am off to Oregon without a head-covering. the hat was such an iconic part of my character. oh well. another abject lesson in non-attachment, again: the symbol is less important than what it signifies. it’s just like how i used to have these wings pinned to the hat, very festive and a bit flamboyant, i rocked them for about a year before i lost them randomly one day, and I figured that was long enough. a nice wool stingy brim fedora with upturned edges, classic but distinct from every other cheesy fedora you can find at a walmart - I wore it for about a year and a half and it became a part of me and people came to recognize me by it and don’t even notice me without it now. but in that time i’d like to think I’ve internalized the confidence and personae that the hat conferred to me, and I don’t really necessarily need it anymore. besides, my hair has grown out considerably over that year and a half and I think I might as well not cover it up anymore. I still want the hat back though. maybe she can mail it to me. he said he didn’t even see our signs, that we were lucky he needed to stop to put some air in his tires. you can’t help but feel like you’re on the right path when it’s presented for you so readily, the path of least resistance, the ideal coincidence. friends start writing me back, excited to be in touch at the thought we’d see each other soon. we’ll get into arcata early enough to decide if we should get ahold of people there or press on to grants pass, we could still make it by tonight. in any case, lunch is in order and if I can get on the wifi somewhere I can look up a couple more phone numbers that I might need. I am like a modern day beatnik with a typewriter that fits in my pocket, and a publishing house available to me at any Internet cafe along the road. it may seem to run against the spirit of the road life, these attachments to technology, especially when my companions are more of the rustic sort. but I have always believed that the new media technologies would enable new lifestyles never before possible, and with the rise of social networking and crowdsourcing and distributed anonymous collectives, I’m doing my best to live up to my ideals and prove that point. so far so good.

hitchin’ / part 1.

we started out with a friend over a morning coffee, all packed up with our lives in just a few bags, stop off alongside the 101 in sonoma county, Steele lane onramp by the in-n-out burger. making some signs that read “north,” and “oregon.” we wait about 20 minutes before a young guy with drums and camping gear pulls over, tells us he’s headed all the way to arcata. pretty ideal. he shifts around his stuff in his car to accommodate us and we’re quickly on our way. I’m txting friends along the route, old friends in arcata, grants pass, eugene, and Portland. letting them know we’re on our way. hope to end up in a nice warm place to sleep but I’ve got a sleeping bag and some long johns just in case. carrying around everything I own in one small briefcase and one large backpacker’s pack, on loan from a friend who’d lived out of it for a couple months in europe, good traveling karma. it feels good to be back on the road.

listening to world music and one of the sons of fela kuti on the stereo. hurdling up the pretty California landscape, the 101 is such a nicer drive than the 5. we’re doing good time, should land in town after 3 pm some time, should have time to get ahold of people and try to see about staying a night or if we should just try to push it further on to Oregon. it’s good to be moving again after staying in Santa Rosa for nearly a few months, with only brief trips into the city to break it up. the bay area has been good to me, and full of good people who took care of me and supported me emotionally. good times, yet still there comes a point when you have to decide that you really are just visiting and you’re ready to move on.

so now I have a traveling partner, a young woman who is content with not knowing where we will end up next, someone excited about the open possibilities inherent in a life lived free of major responsibilities. if we weren’t really doing much in the place we were at, there’s little holding us there and we might as well be anywhere. so we teamed up to pool our collective friendships and have people we can visit, so we’re going to go on this test run and see how it rolls. nothing too strenuous, a good trial at the road life and seeing if you work well together in different contexts. potential for stress, and strange awkward situations that may arise, but it’s your attitude that will take you far. and so far we’ve been getting along famously, everyone of my weirdo friends I have introduced her to have been quite charmed by her. I’m excited to have a partner in crime again, or maybe for the first time, two wily hobos, personable house-guests, commensurate travel buddies.

sitting in the back of this silver honda, driven by a nice young guy from New York who landed in San Francisco, on his way to Arcata to camp on vacation and see some world musicians on the campus there for performances and Afro Cuban rhythms and melodies. honkytonky pianos sorta. driving thru redwoods with sand dollars on the dash. he tells us to remember to pee on some roses when we get to portland. “sometimes you gotta stop and piss on the roses,” I say. leave little memorable turns of phrase to associate with a time and place in conversational contexts, something to bind the group mind together and mark the occasion, milestone markers along the passage of time and place in the narrative of life. in-jokes for in-crowds, drawing circles of inclusion so new friends can relate like familiars. tell me a story, where are you from, what are some life goals you might have, the usual run of intense talk you jump into in the instant camaraderie of adventurous living on the frayed edges of common human experience. some company for a drive, bit of gas money, more comfortable than a bus and cheaper and still way more exciting to boot, because of the element of the unknown. excitement abounds.

the one thing I’m bummed about is that I left town without my hat. a couple days before our big trip I left my hat in a friend of a friend’s car and it was too inconvenient for her to deliver it to me or meet up with her before we had to leave, so I am off to Oregon without a head-covering. the hat was such an iconic part of my character. oh well. another abject lesson in non-attachment, again: the symbol is less important than what it signifies. it’s just like how i used to have these wings pinned to the hat, very festive and a bit flamboyant, i rocked them for about a year before i lost them randomly one day, and I figured that was long enough. a nice wool stingy brim fedora with upturned edges, classic but distinct from every other cheesy fedora you can find at a walmart - I wore it for about a year and a half and it became a part of me and people came to recognize me by it and don’t even notice me without it now. but in that time i’d like to think I’ve internalized the confidence and personae that the hat conferred to me, and I don’t really necessarily need it anymore. besides, my hair has grown out considerably over that year and a half and I think I might as well not cover it up anymore. I still want the hat back though. maybe she can mail it to me.

he said he didn’t even see our signs, that we were lucky he needed to stop to put some air in his tires. you can’t help but feel like you’re on the right path when it’s presented for you so readily, the path of least resistance, the ideal coincidence. friends start writing me back, excited to be in touch at the thought we’d see each other soon. we’ll get into arcata early enough to decide if we should get ahold of people there or press on to grants pass, we could still make it by tonight. in any case, lunch is in order and if I can get on the wifi somewhere I can look up a couple more phone numbers that I might need. I am like a modern day beatnik with a typewriter that fits in my pocket, and a publishing house available to me at any Internet cafe along the road. it may seem to run against the spirit of the road life, these attachments to technology, especially when my companions are more of the rustic sort. but I have always believed that the new media technologies would enable new lifestyles never before possible, and with the rise of social networking and crowdsourcing and distributed anonymous collectives, I’m doing my best to live up to my ideals and prove that point. so far so good.

Posted at 6:24 PM