Journals: 2005(2)by Ric Carter |
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TRANSCRIBED NOTES ETC:
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(( INDEX )) >> NEXT >> CONTENTSIn & Around Volcano: 6/11-12, 6/10, 6/9, 6/8, 6/7, 6/6, 6/5, 6/4, 6/3 June 1-2: Bisbee-Volcano May 31: Back Stateside Mar-May: Toward Panama Feb: TOLAND ADOBE site ACCOUNTSGOOD HITS:RECENT PIECES:(& other songs) | ||
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Back early from Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras, for health-medical reasons. Are the further non-adventures worth chronicling? Read and decide. NOTE: This is not a bLog so you don't have to read it upside down, except for the CONTENTS list. Bisbee AZ to Volcano CADIA CIEN QUATRO: | |||
In & Around Volcano, CaliforniaFriday 3 June 2005 - taking notesEARLY MORNING: The drive was 1000 miles in 20 road hours. Last night we settled in, but for how long? Today we again try to secure a medical appointment. If we're stuck here awhile, I have tasks: shoot images of all our unpacked goodies; start processing all the pictures since that data loss in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico; writing and transcribing more stuff; yardwork (yawn). We shall see... AHA! The appointment is on! Roll to Sacramento this afternoon. Fun fun fun. EARLY EVENING: "Sex is filthy and disgusting, but only if it's done right." (Woody Allen) "Driving to Sacramento is tedious and boring, but only if everything goes well." (Me) Other than the Skeleton Crew bikers ("30 years ago I was a bad-ass; now I'm just a fat-ass!") there's nothing to report but exhaustion. Went to the clinic. Preliminary medical diagnosis: the weevils in my brain have worked their way down. Surprise! THE PROGNOSIS: We'll probably be around here for at least a month, taking care of Maureen's medical stuff, no matter what happens with me. We're unlikely to drive back to Bisbee or Mexico right away — a quick business flight to Antigua Guatemala maybe, but otherwise we'll probably go north from here. Let's see, that could be a Honduras-to-Alaska drive, with layovers. I'm almost afraid to add up the mileage. Saturday 4 June 2005 - taking exhaustMOVEMENT: Another good dull (longer) Sacramento drive through summery foothills and valley. Leave samples at the Kaiser lab for analysis and go on with life. We stop in to see our (hopeful) marketer; Tasha is frantically busy decorating a Moroccan eatery, so we'll call later this week. If business with her goes well, we may do a fast cheap Antigua run in the next few weeks. But whatever, we'll drive north in the RV; probably not to Alaska, but Yukon or MacKenzie should be within reach. I have a plan that gets us to Whitehorse or Yellowknife in a couple months and puts cash back into our budget. See the NORTHERN EXPOSURE planning page (click here) Maureen says that after living for months with our bare minimum of travel gear, she feels overwhelmed by all our possessions. And the trip changed attitudes: we go shopping, look at housewares that formerly would have had us drooling, and we say, "Who needs this crap?!?!?" OBSERVED: A fellow in a bunny suit dancing half-heartedly (and probably sweatily, it's over 90°f outside) in front of a minimall. He's not as entertaining as the pulsating costumed pharmacist and sexy go-go nurses at various Farmacia Similares sites around Mexico. We go into a surplus electronics store for a small component; the shop is full of Russians. We pass a big hotel parking lot filled with scores of Corvettes with their hoods up. At a rural intersection a balding bearded boomer in bloomers stops his big white pickup right in front of us, hops out, and runs off across a field. We pass a military gear shop in Amador City and we think, "AHA! That cannon we saw being towed from Tucson by a truck with an Ione tag, it's probably headed HERE!" IONE? HUH? Awhile back I speculated incorrectly about the origin of the name of Ione. The truth is told in the 1939 WPA Guide To California: "Ione [is] a camp that the first miners called Bedbug and Freeze Out. Later, when churches, homes, schools and stores replaced the miners' tents, the citizens decided that neither term would do for a post office address. They chose the present name in honor of one of the ladies in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii." I have strong if shallow ties to both Bulwer-Lytton and Pompeii. Eeerie... |
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Sunday 5 June 2005 - walking down the ridgeWALKING: Walks have been few and far between lately. We strolled some (but not too strenuously) in Creel. Chihuahua; and we walked downtown in Bisbee; but this is the first time we've got to actually stretch out a little bit since Taxco. And along the way we're joined by a couple of neighbor kids who tell us it snowed in January here, and that there are fun rides at the Italian Picnic down in Sutter Hill today, which we're missing. And that their favorite squirrel has blood on his head and his ear's missing, and his name is Buddy. She's 11 or 12, "developing into a beauty" notes Maureen. Her sister is 13, is getting into trouble, has a hickey, wants to go to Juvenile Hall because it's cool. He's a smart little guy that they're watching for the day. His arm's in a sling, pulled out his elbow socket while wrestling. Ouch. WITHDRAWAL: Being back here and online more means reading more online news, listening to more radio news. It's pretty sickening. I'll have to stop that. The War Nerd at Exile.Ru suggests that Bush and Cheney are al-Quaeda plants. Shall we travel away from the bad news? No, but at least when we're rolling, we can avoid it. And the next step for avoidance is the NORTHERN EXPOSURE TOUR (click here). Yes, it could really happen. Will you miss us? (Hint: use a shotgun, you're less likely to miss.) SONG OF THE DAY: Jesus Was A Cowpoke Monday 6 June 2005 - taking notesA slow start, then down the mountain. Giant robots washed most of the Central American dust off the Ford SUV. We dropped in on cousin Beth with a Swiss gift; if we accept all invitations, we'll be busy with Brad and Beth all next weekend, with a play and a blues festival and a birthday BBQ soire. Can we stand the excitement? An exploratory probe to the Ione post office -- will we find a letter that leads us onward? Yes, so it's another slow safe dull drive to greater Sacramento (Folsom, really), to another Kaiser medical lab where Maureen is vampirized. And yet more! It's always tea time at CostCo, with free sweets and drinks and chirpy interactions in various dialects and levels of intelligibility. NOTE: CostCo is not to be confused with to Cosco, the Chinese PLA- (People's Liberation Army) owned shipping company that now controls the Panama Canal and several former major US Navy bases. And out of the Great Valley through rolling golden hills under a sky-ocean filled with a vast flotilla of puffy cumulus schooners, which we have plenty of time to contemplate as we wait for roadcrews to unblock the highway to let traffic pass. Yes, it's necessary work. No, we're not in a hurry. Yes, the view is beautiful. Can we go home now? EVENING: We picked up a couple large postal bins of mail from the post office today, dating back to when we first left Bisbee. The volume of spam is staggering. So many catalogs hawking stuff we'll never buy, so many financial solicitations we'll always ignore, so much CRAP with our names and address on it. All the latter head straight for Mr Shredder. Anything that identifies with us gets the Ollie North treatment. And in a couple days we'll head to a forest campground and have a nice bonfire in a USDA-approved firepit. Tuesday 7 June 2005 - burning notesBonfire Tuesday, burn the evidence (it's not illegal). Drive up into National Forest, find a nice picnic area by a stream, shovel shredded documents into one of those little BBQ grills, torch'em up, watch real close. Pour a box of water on the ashes. Admire spring in the forest. Inhale. Malaria Tuesday, take the pills (the journey ain't over yet). The protocol is, eat chloroquinine once a week for four weeks before and after being in a malaria zone (and during, of course). I think we have another week yet. Maureen calls to be removed from zillions of mailing lists so we get less USPS spam. I write the history of our first (1999) Northern Exposure tour (click here). We await our medical lab results. Deer walk in the yard.
Fragmentary ideas that may
Wednesday 8 June 2005 - burning bridgesWhen the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. They might as well be dead, when the rain comes, when the rain comes. —John Lennon MORNING: It's raining; we're staying in and calling out. Oops, I forgot to send sister Barbi a b'day card. Will an email suffice? I'll have to admit that we won't be in Arizona when she and Bill come house-hunting. We still await medical word; we go back to Sacramento (Folsom, really) tomorrow for more tests. Our fate is in the hands of fate, or whatever. That bridge is burnt. The rain is too late. Note: Tomorrow's Folsom-Sacramento run is #4 in 7 days. Aaargh. Each such drive costs time and money. And we'll be back next week at least once, meeting with Ms T. It'd be nice to just lay around the house a little more — but NO, that's too easy... NIGHT: Sent the b'day email late; better than never. PG&E wants to cut down one of our trees, and we can maybe sell the wood, so that'll be good — but when? I wrote those culture notes — see above. The rain continues drizzling through the deep dank dark woods. It's enough for late-onset Seasonal Affective Disorder. Thursday 9 June 2005 - burning rubberAnother cool damp drive to Sacramento area; after so many passes, the countryside is nearly impossible to see. We notice a small car with a large sticker: an outline map of North America surrounded by the words Mobile Missionary Assistance Program. Does that mean they assist the mobile missionaries and leave the immobile ones to fend for themselves? Or maybe they go around bothering people, instead of staying in one place to bother people. Spreading cultural genocide around the world, eh? Oh yeah, what's the medical word? Clean bills of health for both of us, so far. Some more tests to be run, and Maureen sees her thyroid specialist in a couple/few weeks, but the preliminary results show no tumors, no infections, minimal trauma. Yippee-ki-yi-yay. WRITE ABOUT: The Future of Pop Culture; and Pop Culture: Sex War . (Finished - see above.) Lenny the Jeep (story and song). Songs about St. Germain and city saints (for mission pictures and my Saints song-cycle). (Work on sightings.) Desert Mysteries (click here): Calico Early Man Site. Desert Lost Ship and Lost Pegleg Mine stories and the Phantom Stagecoach of Borrego-Butterfield. Coming soon: The Complete Moron's Guide to (Cultural) Genocide. Friday 10 June 2005 - burning candlesA keyboard day, an interior day, an easy day, a walk-down-the-ridge day. A stake-the-little-trees day, a run-from-the-mosquitos day, a lookit-all-the-trees day. Today's high point: Loggin' Logan came by (upon request) to look at our trees. We talked and swatted mosquitos. See that 100-foot-high oak with just a few leaves on top? When PG&E puts their big blue X on something, that means it has to go, he sez. Might as well let them do it, they won't charge and I will, he sez. Oaks die from the top down, just look up there, he sez. No, even though it's a black oak, the wood isn't worth anything; you don't buy the wood, you buy the labor of cutting and drying it, he sez. So we guess we'll donate it to a group that supplies firewood to poor folks. It probably won't be chopped for months; we'll come back from some travel, and there'll be a pile of 4-foot oak chunks on the ground. We'll call the volunteers and it'll all go away. Shazam. Logan also sez that none of the nearby pines look like they're about to fall on our house. That's reassuring. But living in a forest is always a risk. Maybe a little less risky than driving around Sacramento, renowned for lousy drivers. Less risky than taming hamsters. Less risky than working or flying or burning candles. Hell, I think I'll light a candle RIGHT NOW! UPDATE OF THE DAY: Northern Exposure II Sunday 12 June 2005 - burning caloriesSATURDAY: Another stake-the-little-trees-some-more-and-run-from-the-mosquitos day. The RV doesn't need jumping, the DVD burner does need some blanks, I need to start processing journey pictures, we need to beat the mosquitos tomorrow and finish the tree-staking. EVENING: Readying for the B&B BBQ Bash, we get a call: ice and mixers are needed. We fetch, and the event is a rousing success. BBQ stuff is consumed, people are hugged, packages are opened. Most of the usual suspects are on hand; Mayari, niece of a President of Costa Rica, is in Guatemala visiting family. Rusty is on leave from his Santa Monica Pier eatery. The evening is pleasant; everyone escapes alive. SUNDAY: The final stake-the-trees-and-run-from-the-mosquitos morning. Another keyboard-til-the-cows-come-home day. Yet another heat-up-some-cheap-tasty-leftovers evening. Me Mum called; yup, we're OK for now. And disk space is being cleared up; I can edit pictures soon. Maureen has plans for me. Uh-oh. EVENING: I admit to being entranced and consumed by Flickr.Com, a free image-posting-hosting site. Why? EVERYBODY'S PHOTOS; a steady stream of images whip by, most of which can be grabbed, many of which are worth editing-adapting. They range from the sublime to the gorblimey, tho the bell curve skews towards blah snaps. But I can't stay away. Click here to see what happens next. |
 AT THE SAT. BBQ: the White sisters (Las Abuelitas); 3 Carters; 3 NorCal Barnards; 2 SoCal Bernards; some cats. MORE-TO-DO LIST:Drill a hole in the wall, run a net cable to Maureen's desk. Order a Sony laptop battery. | ||
What Maureen Has Planned For Me:
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Ric Carter, ric@sonic.net, www.sonic.net/~ric, copyright © by OTRSS