I’m off on my next Great Adventure, a large loop of the
Pacific Northwest -- if all goes to plan -- followed by a stint in Montana
where I’ll finish the second draft of my novel.
And with any great adventure, it got off to a rocky start.
The week before I left New Orleans I lost my wallet. I
suppose I’m glad it happened before I left and not after, but a pain nonetheless.
Ah, yes, Louisiana, where you can be whomever you wish. When
I finally changed my CA license over to reflect my new residency two years ago,
I was never asked to prove my home address; I simply rattled it off to the lady behind the desk. Her neon talons went clackity-clack on the keyboard as she typed it in without question. This time around I had to show proof of insurance on my vehicle, but
was never asked for any form of ID at any time during the proceedings. If you’d
like to become someone else, I highly recommend relocation to Louisiana. I
could be anyone right now, but instead chose to remain myself.
At least I had a lovely companion for the Louisiana-Colorado
segment of this trip. I’d placed an ad on Craiglist offering a ride from New
Orleans to Colorado Springs or points in between and got messages from some
very… interesting ladies, such as:
“I am a very easy to get along w/
humorous,outgoing and positive lady,mature,but extremely young at heart. Love 2
explore, laugh and b goofy, and I am non-judgemental, respectful and
spiritually minded.
As of now it would b just me, but just checking 2 c if my 2 itsy-bitsy well
behaved dogs may b allowed. […] Im not sure if I will take them yet, may have
sum1 bring them up later,just lemme know if its a possibility.I would,however,
definately need room 4 luggage,the back seat is fine. June 12th is awesume,so
plz call me 2 talk bout it, may b meet 4 coffee so we r both comfortable,but Im
alota fun!”
and
You asked for some personal information. I am 64
years young and have traveled the US, mostly to research BBQ because my dream
is to write a book about the best BBQ in the US. I am easy to get a long with. [...] The only thing (or two things) that you should know is
that I am a nudist. I am actually allergic to many clothes fibers and can't
stay in them for long periods of time. So while I would be in my clothes for
some of the trip, I would prefer to be out of them for the long stretches of
road where we are just driving. The second..well, I don't think that's
important. I am happy to pay for my share of gas and I do my
own pickeling. Let me know when we leave!”
I fibbed and told both these ladies that I already had found
a rider, though in retrospect I wish I’d drawn the nudist pickler out to find
out more about the “second thing.” Was it that you are an axe-murderer madam? I
can see why you’d prefer to tell me that once we got on the road, instead.
I finally received a message from my passenger-to-be:
”
Tracy (name changed to protect the travelin’ kids) is a
21-year-old hippie waif with a history of hitchhiking and a level head for her
age. Apparently she started wandering around Europe at age 16, though this trip
was to be the furthest west she’d ever been in the States. When Tracy got in
the car she told me that she could afford the gas money we’d agreed on but not
much else, and that if I stopped at restaurants and the like she probably wouldn’t
get anything. We’d both brought food for the road so that was no big deal, and
while my comfort level is a higher than hers, her lifestyle is no mystery to
me. We had pleasant conversation along the way, and I feel like I imparted some
wisdom from the road to her: odd-numbered highways go north-south, evens east-west;
mile markers generally line up with the exit numbers. Useful information for hitchhiker
and traveler alike.
I was regretting the decision to remain my own self in Louisiana when I was pulled over shortly after crossing into Texas,
mere hours into our trip. I was going less than
10 miles over the speed limit and keeping up with traffic on the interstate, so
I was surprised when the police vehicle in front of me slammed on his brakes,
moved into the slow lane, merged in behind me and flipped on his lights. Not
only that, the officer asked me to get out of my car and come over to his SUV as
four lanes of 18-wheelers screamed past so he could write up my ticket. Safety
third, Texas! I can only guess that the cop saw I was from out of state and
knew I was unlikely to show up at a court date.
Shortly before sunset we stopped to camp out at a hidden reservoir
near Wichita Falls, TX, so hidden it took us three passes on the gravel road to
find it. While we celebrated the mid-point in our journey with a PBR tallboy in
the fading light, the Aaron Eckhart of game wardens stopped by with a puzzled
look on his clean-shaven, clefted-chin face. He said he’d never seen women
camping out here alone before, except for one old Native American who was here
to mediate under the stars, which he thought was strange. (I said that they’d
be doing that for a long, long time before we got here, and he laughed, “I
guess you’re right.”) He asked us many questions: “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” “Do you have any weapons?” “When
are you leaving?” “How did you even find this place??” For a minute we thought
he was going to ask us to move along, though the Texas state website said that
camping was allowed. Eventually Game Warden Eckhart told us that the yahoos
didn’t really come out here until the weekend, so we should be pretty safe and drove
off in his muddy pickup with the lights off so he could “sneak up on people.”
We settled down to sleep about an hour later, I in my
camping hammock and Tracy in her sleeping bag under the stars. Around 3am I
roused her.
“We have to go someplace with a bathroom.”
Yes, I had developed food poisoning from the pulled pork I’d
finagled three days before I left New Orleans (lesson learned: religiously ice
down the cooler when meat is involved). Within 10 minutes we had the car packed
up and were zooming down the muddy gravel road to the nearest truck stop, where
we spent the next hour waiting it out. Tracy was a champ. Yes, her having the
ability to help drive the last 450 miles would have been a great help to me,
but what she lacked in licenses she made up for in patience and understanding.
I had to take four naps that day to get us all the way to Pueblo, CO, and she
made no complaints of any kind along the way. She even gave me a little massage
at a rest area in New Mexico to alleviate my excruciating lower back pains.
It took us 12 hours to drive the last 450 miles of the trip,
but with her moral support I was able to pull it off. She was off to see her
sister in Gunnison, another 4 hours west of Pueblo, so we found her a good spot
to hitch from and off she went. I myself found the nearest cheap motel and
crawled into bed at 6pm.
Today I’ll be headed out near Cripple Creek to see Katie,
whom I spent almost every day with while I was in Berlin last summer. Her mama
is a llama farmer here in CO, and I’m going to meet the llama she named after
me, as well as Katie’s new bambino. After that it’s off to Woody Creek to have
a drink in honor of Hunter S. Thompson, then Salt Lake City and San Francisco
to help Chicken John out with a crazy maritime festival where we’ll build boats
out of junk and dreams. The adventure continues!
