Lost in America

My variety rack is full!

2009-03-16T17:25:00.001-07:00

I wear lots of hats nowadays. You know, Hats. That old cliche, the metaphor for "I am fulfilling more roles than that of Supreme Couch Potato, thankyouverymuch." It's been a pretty active month past, and as the weather changes, my activity level will increase at a mathematical (rather than grammatical) rate. This is because I do things outside, like play in the dirt and pretend I can garden and haul 140 lb. bales of alfalfa in a cart with flat tires up a trail of mud 6 inches deep and heft little goats back over the fences they jump. I may have lost some weight, despite the amount of food and beer I consume (though the latter is less than it was at this time last year...).

This is no excuse (it's a reason) for my not posting in a while. I will try to articulate some of the things that cross my mind on a typical day recently.

I had a daydream/nightmare while milking the other day: background: there are a bundle of goats that have CAE, which is basically goat HIV which is transmitted through milk (but not to humans), and they are kept separate from the other, socially accepted goats. My daydream involved the CAE girls getting into the main milker pen, and that I would find them all having a crazed, unprotected-teat-licking lesbian goat orgy, and they would all be infected and have to wear red collars and be goat pariahs.

I am reading a book called Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, and it's getting to my head. The chapter was on musical hallucination, and I've started hearing music in my head right before I go to sleep. I can see the way it's played on the guitar, and the sounds are catchy and original-sounding, and I want so badly to remember, but I'm too tired to wake myself up and be the hallucination.

I have planted peas and rhubarb and a little grafted plum tree, and I hope they grow big and yummy. It's the first time I've actually gardened for myself, and it's a different world. I (and Liz, who has put numerous hours into weeding and pruning our rose bushes) get to manage this yard. The landlord told us we have free reign, that he was glad to have the yard put to use. I don't think he knew what he was getting into. That whole damn yard is going to be beautiful, if not entirely edible (including eggs...), and grass-free by the time I can make a down payment on some land. The yard hadn't been tended in two years, so there are more weeds than grass in all the wrong places. But I'm learning how I garden when left on my own, which is basically to have a rotation of tasks that I do all at once and never quite finish. Edging, weeding, tilling, and braiding some baling twine were my tasks today (aside from planting rhubarb and potting the tree), and I went from one to the other until I felt satisfied that I had made a visible impact. It also hailed a bit, and rained, and hailed, and got sunny, and all the while it was about 60 degrees. Freaking Oregon.

On top of that paragraph, I have three jobs. The one I am going to use as inspiration for short films that nobody will understand. Another is doing landscaping for a pregnant woman who can't lift heavy things, and she pays me well. The other is a more serious, careerly endeavor. I am a "junior manager" sort in the home office of San Diego Motorcycle Training, run by my neighbor Joe. Joe deserves his own blog post. He's great, and he hired me. I'm on a salary for 8 hours of work per week until I'm sufficient enough to do more. It's a hard job for me because I'm not used to "office work" and "phones" and "efficient methods of communication" and "business practices." It's not a job I will have any stories about, but it is a job that could eventually offer paid leave and benefits. The only benefit the goats provide is the white, fat-infused substance that keeps me from getting very skinny. And stories.

These three jobs mean that I work six days a week, which is too much. That's the bummer here: there's just not enough days in the week. You know, Days. It's that old cliche that moms use when the house is messy. It's a metaphor that means, "my damn kid plays video games 6 hours a day." Or is it "not enough hours in the day," or "days in the year?" Whatever.

On S.N.O.B.B.E.R.Y.

2009-02-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

On being a Supporter of Native Oregon Beer and Being Exceptionally Rank and goatY:

I am an ol-factory, a synaptic, smelly mess. I've begun to detect anomalous odors amidst clouds of organic fumage. The scent of beer and raspberries mingles with capric acid and ammonia, causing much confusion in my sniffer. I've been smelling so much lately, I don't know where I stand, where to stand. My friend and fellow goatherd Alex gave it to me straight:

"People who judge beer... they're snobs."

I turned a sensory corner, began to learn the art of beer-collage, the synesthesia of aroma and adjective. Things described as "horse blanket" and "dimethyl sulfide" now have, by popular vote, an ascribed smell, and vice-versa. Caramel, chocolate, nut, grass, citrus, and flower are now things that come in the form of beer. I already knew it was a meal in a bottle, but this is ridiculous, right? And for all my eschewing of labels, I find myself taking on the label of "Snob" with a capital S that rhymes with Mess that stands for TROUBLE.

It could be worse, you know, and I am swearing to myself that I will use my new powers to educate, not criticize; to learn, not spurn; to brew well, but not balk if you hand me a Rolling Rock.

Goat Sects

2009-01-23T12:02:00.000-08:00

Renata came running up to the fence, bleating, with her one stubby finger-like horn bent the wrong way. She's a skinny girl, brown, relatively cute, and out of place at the lower barn. She had been put in a sick pen for some reason, and when an ailing old goat took hospice in one of the sick pens, Renata was displaced to the main part of the lower barn. Being small, she was automatically placed lowest in the pecking order and bullied away from the feeders, even maliciously headbutted in the ribs when she was just hanging around. She took to hiding on the outside of the wall of the enclosure. The past couple days when I went to feed them, she ran up to me and pressed her body against my leg and bleated. When I went to leave, she tried to come with me. I felt bad for her, forced to live in an unfamiliar place with testy, exclusive barn-mates.

Today I tossed a couple flakes of alfalfa (the good stuff) into the pasture space, just to get some of the goats out of the hay'n'shit they live in, and she ran over to the fence and gave me very pathetic eyes, about as pathetic as a goat can look. Since she's from the milking group, I brought her onto the wooden milking stand, put her head in the headlock, and gave her a scoop of grain (the really good stuff), which she began to devour. I sat down behind to milk her, gave one squeeze, and noticed a drop of blood on the ground by her legs. It wasn't from her teats. Apparently she had been pregnant and aborted, probably because of the tormenting and lack of food.

I let her finish the grain and put her back in a sick pen with a fellow milker, Hillary. Renata started headbutting Hillary away from the food.

Getting to know another species is pretty strange. To the extent that they're dumb animals, I'm a source of food and water, and they follow the grain bucket around like a hungry school of fish. I communicate with them through that, in a way. The milkers know what to do when I wake them up at 5 in the morning, and don't give me trouble any more when I "tsch, tsch" them down the muddy path to the dairy.

It's another thing to have animals that realize that you are a source of protection, or some sort of deity. One milker, Jardin, likes to rub her face on my leg when I'm leading goats up the ramp to be milked. The little cutie we call Rebecca's Kid comes up to me and tries to nibble my fingers, accepts my petting and the strange noises I make at her. I take these things as a sign of affection or tribute. And Renata, who sees humans and realizes that we're the ones to tell when something's wrong with her, except we don't know how to interpret pathetic eyes. It's almost impossible to tell when a doe is pregnant until a couple days beforehand, which is why breeding is pretty regulated (you don't want random goats dropping kids without warning).

A couple does have died in the last month; one of old age, the other of some illness that resembled the flu. Two now have aborted. I suppose those are standard statistics among 200 goats. However, there are a dozen or so does who are due for their first kids pretty soon, so the cycle will continue. Perhaps I'll get to name one. Names I would choose for a goat would include:

Albert Einstein, H.W. Longfellow, Rammstein, Her Majesty, Dinah Mo Humm, and Leonora

STUFF

2009-01-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

It's one of the teenage answers:

"How are you, honey?"
"Fine."

"Would you like M&Ms on your pastrami sandwich?"
"I guess."

"What did you do today, honey?"
"Stuff."

The secret word for tonight is "STUFF." Except for its form as a verb, stuff is a pretty ambiguous word. If read enough times in succession, one may find its meaning to cease altogether. Stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff. Just a bunch of symbols. Now no longer ambiguous, "STUFF" enters the realm of the absurd. Read it again with me: STUFF?

We've all got it. Some of us are it (in adjective form: stuffy). It happens to our noses (verb: stuffed). We acquire it, lose it, deal it, and heehaw over its value in our lives. I got my stuff back recently. Previously it was across the country, and I acquired lots of stuff during my separation from stuff to partially replace the stuff I had been using, but which was so far away. I now have an abundance of stuff. Most of it is useful, and some is just for decoration.

Now the questions: Is it good to have all this stuff (AGAIN)? Well, what was it like without it?

It is nice to see most of this stuff again. Without it, recently, I had been proclaiming at random the things I was going to have in the near future (an apron! a pizza peel! a regular-sized pillow!). However, except for the upgrade in quality of stuff (the old, had-stuff as opposed to the newer, replacement stuff), I could have gotten by quite easily without all this stuff, as I had been for the last four months (plus three months on the road with even less stuff and even more excitement; is there a causative relationship here?).

The option of selling all my stuff and starting from scratch had been considered, tossed up and down like a baseball while determining the best pitch. It's full count (toss up), this guy's not the greatest hitter (catch), but it's the eighth inning and I'm tired (toss up), and the next guy's so good I'll just walk him (catch). It was just like that, come to think of it. The option was overridden by the potential energy spent selecting the items to be sold, assessing their value, selling them, then reacquiring similar items without sacrificing quality over price. Complicated. Such are the mechanisms of stuff.

So now I have stuff all over the house (the house itself does not count as stuff; I think stuff is inherently plural). Lots of it has become unpacked and strewn about in a fashion that is more than disorderly but less than symmetrical. It has been creatively arranged to divide space and indicate a particular activity that is designated for that space (large dining room table is reserved for accumulation of stuff; constantly-unraveling rug in the bathroom denotes bathroom activities, etc.). I am of a mind (of whose mind, I know not) that there is actually TOO MUCH STUFF in the house. This is a condition that can develop several plot lines:

1) Disease/virus: symptoms include growth and multiplication of stuff. If left unattended, normal operations may become affected or cease altogether.

2) Profit: stuff is sold, marketed cleverly on Craigslist. Example: "Coby DVD player, nearly new, with box, manual, remote. $20."

3) Stasis: due to constraints of time and willpower, stuff is stuffed. Closets will be relatively organized, but full. Stuff may stick around until it is decided that stuff will never be used or seen again.

Such are the infinite possibilities of stuff.

Some of the stuff I have is nostalgic. Things from my grandmother, Mona: a rug, painting, spoon, ice cream scoop, enameled cast-iron cookware, coffee table, a photograph of her as a beautiful young woman, a pair of sunglasses, a ceramic sign that reads "Casa Mona." That's most of the nostalgic stuff. I got a very strange feeling when I saw some of those things again, so far removed from the memories I associate with them, with Mona; a mixture of sadness, loss, holding-on, relief. The emotional weight of stuff.

Also, a marvelling at seeing some of this stuff: a very sharp knife, my stereo system and DVDs. Owning DVDs has been rendered a trifle these days, but I like the fact that I can watch The Fifth Element for the 77th time whenever I want, as loud as my ears and bass-thumped torso can stand.

There are so many philosophical aspects to stuff; I'm not going to bother un-cocting this matter any further because we all know this stuff already. Here is a short list of stuff that I claim, by gift, monetary procurement, or common-law possession, as my own:

a console TV that weighs close to 300 lbs.; 3 copies of In Stitches, a film by Mark McAllister; The Jewish Book of Why; a college diploma in leatherette folder; a pair of black leather boots handmade in Chiapas

I woke up this morning!

2009-01-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Emphasis on MORNING. Not "this predawn, ultradark, sun-on-opposite-side-of-world" sort of morning, which is the tail end of the day for many people. Nope, I woke up this morning. Liz was out of bed before me! I was able to follow through with my dream (which contained a lot of hugging of friends; a theme that's been turning up every couple weeks since October or November. It's nice!)!

!

I suppose I hadn't worked a "full week" at anything since the last week of May. Please don't fault me for sounding so relieved; those goats really know how to permeate. A hypothesis of mine was laid to rest: it takes fewer than five days to get every layer of my work uniform (sometimes up to 5 on my torso) insulated with the sweet-sour smell of the farm life. By the fifth morning I could smell my clothes when I walked into the spare room (I sure as hell don't keep them in an area of common passage) and though I didn't gag, my eyes rolled a little from the stench and the irony. My coffee smelled like farm sleeves, tasted kinda like coffee. I have whole beans that I won, er... stole... from a white elephant party. I have no bean grinder, but I do have a mortar & pestle. I don't recommend it for grinding coffee.

I woke up this morning! I will wake up tomorrow morning as well and I will make crepes and put pear/anise and blueberry/ginger goat cheese on them and I will lounge in my boxers and I will play scrabble and go to bed at a reasonable hour (after 9:30) and I will have more hugging dreams and I will play my guitar and I will be done with this post. Hurray!

In Teats We Trust

2008-12-22T14:05:00.000-08:00

I know I am not getting out enough; I spend my evenings cooking and zoning out to primetime TV (it's free!), my afternoons playing guitar and doing crossword puzzles, and my early mornings talking to goats as if their floppy ears and misshapen pupils process my silhouette and the sounds that emanate from my mouth into a comprehensive personality with which they knowingly interact. I refer to them as "people" and "folks," apologize to them when I slice off parts of their hooves, and thank them when I return them to their pens. I am grateful to them for providing me with both a meager income and all of the near-expired cheese I can imagine consuming.

Biding my time at the farm is giving me time to work on my bilingual comedy routine; my audience is perfect: contained, relatively sedate, and a hair smarter than a chicken. They listen especially well when I wield a flake of alfalfa or a bucket of grain. The latter is the best; while my fellow goatherd sneakily fills the grain tray I can guide a flock of hungry kids in circles with an empty blue bucket to avoid her being trampled by extremely cute hooves. You see, I get very excited about the blue bucket as if there were grain in it, and the silly kids think it's true.

So I've done a lot of goat-related things lately. I have more goat friends than people friends. My right hand can now be officially described as "bigger than my left." My relationship with poop has become more intimate than I think it's reasonable to imagine. When I feel a nibble on my pants or have my hand slammed against a wall by the hoof I'm trying to clean, it's just another day at the office.

I talked to my brother on the phone the other day; he's still in that "disposable income" phase, the phase that would be heaven if not for the hormonal imbalances. He asked me why I had worked on so many farms (3), and why I was doing it. My response was, "well, I have to pay for food and housing and stuff." Something in the way he repeated what I had told him tipped me off: "So you mean you have to pay for housing and all your food and stuff??" He is in Fiscal Flatland; the third dimension of money is a nonentity to him; all he knows is that money is gotten and spent in straight, easy lines. The third dimension, obligation, has yet to be imposed upon him, and is finally coming upon me in ways I had hoped would never furrow my brow.

When I realized his cluelessness, I remembered being that way, giving my paychecks from Olsson's right back for CDs without worrying about gas or food money, much less rent money. Even after being bailed out by my folks for fiscal irresponsibility, it took a few years (and paying rent) for the concept to dawn. This last year I had a job and a living situation that afforded me plenty of extra money for both saving and spending proudly; I left that job and that house and that money (that three-month-long trail of money) to seek a fortune, and my fortune's embryo is a goat. Life is a goat. I'm not dismayed. I like goats well enough. My only hope is that my fortune's larva makes a little more money.

This Morning

2008-12-15T10:22:00.000-08:00

3: 40 a.m. First accumulation seen since a glacier in Colorado.

Buxom Does Really Get My Goat!

2008-12-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 4:00 this morning, grabbed a hunk of (delicious garlic rosemary) bread, put some muesli in a cup with some rice milk, and ran out the door. I drove past the exit where I was supposed to get off the highway and ended up being a half hour late for my second day of work at Fern's Edge Goat Dairy.

Goats. Where do I begin? My first glimpse of them was yesterday when I came in (right on time) to the milking room and was faced with six goat asses, dangling udders, teats being sucked into pulsating vacuum tubes, milk flowing into a tank. Somehow this didn't phase me, and I learned right quick how to clean, strip (get the juices flowing), and insert the teat into the tube. It's not a very complicated process, and although it's only about 80 goats that get milked (of 200 on the property), it's a very factory-like process. I suppose that's what happens when you mechanize. My prior farm experience involved nothing more mechanical than an auger I used to drill post holes. This is high-tech modernity!

I don't know if you know this, or want to, but teats are far out! Have you ever looked at 80 different sets of teats before? Probably not. They're like snowflakes, but more squeezable. Some of them are large and dangly. Others are small. Some are wrinkly. I think I must have very wide palms because I can only use two or three fingers to squeeze an average sized teat or I spray milk all over my hand. Some teats are in just the right place, and others you might have to search for and pull back a little bit. I don't know how the goats feel about this; they have their heads stuck between metal bars, munching away on grain and kelp powder or trying to bite their neighbor's ear.

The morning shift takes between five and six hours, and involves feeding the multiple pens, milking two sets of goats, twelve at a time, and then feeding all the goats and the cows. It's crazy how fast time passes when you get to work two hours before the sun. I still have most of the day ahead of me. I don't really have any gripes about this job, especially since I got rubber boots. I just gotta go to bed early. Well, my hands smell like goats right now, which is a strange combination of raw milk, hay, and ammonia. You have to deal with a lot of goat shit, which is a small step away from dirt. Also, goats use urine as a sign of posession. I haven't been peed on yet.

It's a relief to know that somebody needs my work in exchange for their money (and they really need me-- very short staffed-- though the pay's not great), and I'm looking forward to hearing the same thing from the U of O (if you take out the "of" it's just You Owe...) pretty soon. I'm pretty sure they're gonna want me.

Goat pictures coming soon.

The Kitchen Spews Forth

2008-11-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

Kitchen in America begins here.

My Mom once had a job at the National Children’s Center. She brought home some funny, if not slightly inappropriate, stories of the people there. One man would ask her every day, “What did you have for dinner last night?” That is the question I seek to answer here.

Last night was pretty special. I started in the morning, actually, with a poolish (2 c. water, 2 c. flour, ¼ t. yeast). That’s the easy part; it just sits there. Same with the soaking chickpeas. It was great to come out in the morning and see they had inflated so much as to pop off the lid of the yogurt container. The little successes are just as tickling as the big ones.

In the afternoon I cooked the chickpeas to the tenderness of a clump of dry soil; easy to mash (electric appliances here = toaster oven). I then created my dough:

2 c. poolish 3.5 c. bread flour ½ T. salt ½ t. yeast 1 T. fresh rosemary ¾ c. water

It turned out to be a really dense dough, and it took a very short knead to get that gluten developed (I haven’t worked with bread flour in quite a while). My original intent was loaves, but the more I thought about it, the more pita seemed the logical end. Turns out that pita dough is basically the same as bread dough. Go figure! I plopped the dough into a bowl with some olive oil and turned back to the hummus:

3 c. soft chickpeas 3 T. tahini juice of ½ lemon 2 t. salt 2 cloves of garlic any herbs you choose (I chose some paprika, pepper, and 1 T. rosemary, since our rosemary bush is HUGE)

Mash all that together, or if you’re fancy, process it until it’s as smooth as you want it to be (I like mine smoother than Smoove B., but the potato masher is no match for a metal blade spinning faster than John McCain’s head two weeks ago. Chunky it was.).

Back to the pita. It’s freaking easy. Preheat your oven to 475. If you have a baking stone, you know what to do with it. If not… you’re on your own. Divide the (risen) dough into as many pieces as you see fit, ball them, then press them into discs (don’t roll them yet) and wait 20 minutes (science note: the gluten has to adjust to the stretching it’s about to receive. If you don’t give it a preliminary squish, it will keep springing back when you try to roll it out.) Roll the pieces out thin, about ¼ inch. Let them sit (unstacked, if possible) for 10 minutes, then spritz your baking stone with water and put on as many as will fit. Now is the fun part.

I like to watch my bread rise in the oven. It’s like watching a fetus grow, but it takes just a few minutes and you can eat it afterward. Watching the pita has a cinematic bent to it; suspense builds as you see little bubbles form on the surface, and you’re not sure whether that’s all you’re going to get, or if it’ll go all the way and form a big steamy pocket. After three minutes, you will know. If it inflates all the way, congratulations, it’s a pita. If not, if your dough lacks some gluteny chromosomes and it miscarriages, do not worry; you have a darling bubbly baby naan! Carry on. Don’t let these brown or they’ll be too crispy and not moist and floppy.

This last bit I credit to Liz for the inspiration; she wanted tempeh. A quick sauté of red pepper, fresh-from-the-CSA-box specialty onion (I don’t know what specialty, it was light purple and shaped like a tamale), toss the tempeh in until brown, and garnish with some cilantro. That’s it! Make a bed of hummus on a plate, put the tempeh on, and serve with hot pita (that’s been sitting under something, keeping it warm and moist).

What a delicious meal; our recent cooking had lacked that Mediterranean flavor, and this was the perfect remedy. The rosemary and cilantro really perk things up, and the textures all went together so well. Filling, too; one serving was just enough.

Giada, eat your heart out.

Next: Tempeh-mental!

Mushroom, Mushroom!

2008-11-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

They poke their little heads out of the duff...

Or emerge like seashells from stumps...

This lobster used to be a russala until a parasite attacked it.

This chanterelle looks like a butt.

A slug: a more mobile, slimy form of mushroom.

These white ones were my favorite; they were soft, velvety, and looked like ghosts.

Eat 'em up, YUM!

Home Space

2008-11-18T11:39:00.000-08:00

View into the back yard. Note apple tree.

Artichokes?

Chardy chard!

The back yard looking at the house.

Living space.

First whole wheat bread and caraway/currant scones! Deeeeeelish!

Underdog Vs. The Invisible Snowball

2008-11-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

This true, new babe from the woods, used to having income poured into his lap, knew nothing of what it means to be, still, Lost In America.

New intelligence:
house
job tentacles

New house! Gas stove! No cats! Garden!
Practically paradise in every way. Pictures coming when I stop stealing slow internet and go to the library.

Still waiting. Not tables. Just waiting. Turning compost, turning pages of my crossword book, turning slowly into vegetable matter via ingestion. Turning in applications.

I know I'm perfect for this job. That job is me, and I have to wait until the 2nd week of December before I know, unless they do the obvious thing: close the classified ad, toss out all the other applications, and hire me now, which is what they really ought to do. I'm gonna tell them so when I get the chance. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a call from a temp agency. And for Publisher's Clearinghouse to knock on my door. And for that CEO's extra tax money to enter my bank account. And for ... well, you get it.

Here's a very sappy ode to some people who deserve an ode (the odeious):

You are responsible for my cold toes;
your good vibes warmed my heart.

Michael Glaser, eat your heart out.

I'm no longer pacing the way I was a couple weeks ago; the move and the groove have kept me busy enough. Halloween had me dancing in drag in a house designed with the intent of having psychedelic raves. Since then I've been cooking and baking. Yesterday, the DIVA center showed selections from the Punto y Raya film festival, which should be an inspiration to anybody who loves electronic distortion and epilepsy (that's you, Noise Test!). Today... I will be thinking of ways to use the garden over winter, prepare it for spring.

American Abject

2008-10-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about abjection, about wearing your guts on the outside, the externalization of negativity, like barfing on a stage on a suburban cul-de-sac. I remember this movie, a Japanese movie called Pinocchio 964, that I was forced (ok, not forced, but encouraged) to watch in my Horror Film class a couple years back, and I remember hating it so much because the displays of abjection (violent, unceasing illness and deformity in populated areas) were so overblown, an onslaught of sound and image that, instead of being justified Hollywood-style, left nothing to reason with. As we discussed in class, it was an abjection of Japanese silence and internalization after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder what the American abjection could look like.

It may be like Total Recall, Fight Club, or the horse-head scene from The Godfather, or when Barton Fink wakes up next to a dead woman. Normally, when we think of abjection, it is of "abject poverty," which is sort of a redundancy; society excludes the destitute, and those within the society, speaking personally, have trouble identifying with it. Abjection is a surreal experience, having yourself projected, or ejected, from any frame of reference.

To situate myself in this discussion, I'm feeling a little bit abject, and I'm feeling strangely responsible for that feeling. Accompanying that are bits of regret, depression, and confusion that come from lack of future-certainty. My connections are mostly through the ether (the internet, phone), my current home is temporary, I'm separated from my family and friends, and I'm unemployed, tasty chum in a sea where the sharks are starving but not hungry. In some ways it's abjection, in others uncanniness.

There is a three-minute film festival coming up, and I'm having trouble visualizing exactly what I want to do, or how I can do it. All I've got is my digital still camera. This is not a new limitation for me; there are just ideas now to be parsed through, the transition from the mental to the physical image, the barrier of progress. And how to display abjection without seeming pathetic or trite, how to get over my own discomfort displaying my work, how to explain myself.

Imagine waking up, brushing teeth, performing morning rituals in a pile of nasty compost, preparing breakfast in industrial waste, shaving your face with a railroad spike without a look of disgust, but the normal, blank, pre-coffee stare. All conveyed in still images. . . I suppose that's a beginning.

This is all very unsexy.

Routini

2008-10-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

I run like clockwork; waking thinking coffeeing pooping biking internetting jobhunting cooking eating thinking biking cooking eating movieing thinking sleeping repeating. Basically. It's getting out of hand. Last night Liz and I went for a walk around the neighborhood before dinner. Tuesday I went mushroom hunting with Jason.

I discovered last week that the media network in Eugene actually exists; there is one, and it is in no way affiliated with craigslist. I think it avoids craigslist as a rule. So now I'm trying my hand at "networking," a method of making friends with the idea that they will lead you to money. I walk into places and chat for a minute before handing them my resume, but not before they tell me that "the economy sucks right now," and that nobody's really hiring, at least they aren't. And with a grimace they take my resume and say, "good luck," as I leave. Other companies that don't seem to have an exact address I've learned aren't worth a call. The "company" is a dude with some equipment, like me if I had equipment and people called me with personal projects like weddings and can-you-put-this-home-movie-on-dvd.

My days are full of cooking! I have just enough time to do all of this before I need to sleep. All of my food is cooked by me, not by someone else because it now comes in a plastic tub and still has root strands, bitter green tops, dirt in the crevices. I get to choose the combinations of foods that I eat, and I get to know how much of what is put in, and it all comes from a big little farm in Junction City; it's almost too much. Perishables sitting in a plastic tub in the shade outside my door, for lack of refrigerator room. I think life would be easier if that was my life. Life as a Napa cabbage.

My liquid bread turned out beautifully, just as a homebrew should. The hops leveled out, the body is palpable, the malt is refreshing, and the nose is somewhere between Wisconsin and Belgium. I think I'll call it The Fog. It's a hearty 7.3%, and is available only in bombers at my house in Eugene, so come'n get it!

Shuddering in America: America Who? Government.

2008-10-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

As the internet ambassador for campaignatorial absurdities, I am going to comment vaguely on comments put forth by the loquacious Shuddering Noise Machine on the last future-president debate. Here it goes:

It was about five minutes into this business that I was distracted by John McCain's blinking. It didn't stop. Every syllable, blink. Blink Blink Blink, those gray lids over vacuous irises, as if his own voice was a hammer landing on a nail driving into cheap, thin plywood, waiting for it to split with every blink. I decided from then on that he was either lying and knew it, or he was lying because he wasn't sure what the right thing to say was. To his right, Obama; composed, serene, articulate, yes, and he blinked at a fairly normal rate-- the only moments I noticed were when he stumbled over the "what are you going to cut?" question, and perhaps a bit on healthcare. I too wish your employer would give you healthcare. I wish I had an employer to give me healthcare.

What got me slapping my forehead and exhaling forcefully was that when McCain had the rebuttal: on healthcare and Ayers, notably, despite the fact that Obama "won" those rounds without breaking a sweat, McCain's choice of rebuttal was to state his original claim once more, giving the last word clearly; "we need to know the specifics of your relationships," etc. This, I am afraid, is what will stick in many a mind. Obama has linguistic power, but at times it goes over my head. Smart and capable as he is, we have to remember that W somehow got "elected" twice, and that focusing on trivial behaviors such as flip-flopping and b'yah!ing and other distortions have swung elections; it need not be overstated that it is likely that most people get most of their campaign news from The View and Entertainment Weekly. I know my housemates do.

On to Joe the Plumber. I kept hearing "Joe Strummer." Joe Strummer, you're rich, but you're dead. Sorry, your employer can't help you there. I will send him a fine. I think that Joe T. Plumber would be mighty confused and vote for Nader after the Abbott/Costello pickup routine that's just been put on him. Debates should not resemble Warner Bros. cartoons, nor should they target a single person out of 95% to give all of their well-researched policy changes. I want some. I want $5000 so I can pay off my college loan and I want the economy to change... but I don't want it to change in four years because I want to buy land reeeeaaaallllllllly cheap... if'n I can get a mortgage these days. Wait, who am I rooting for anyhow?

I think McCain said, in the same response, "we need to spread the wealth around," and then, "we don't need to spread the wealth around." Is that correct?

I wish that Obama had said, "Sarah Palin may have been a clever choice for running mate, McCain, and she may be governor of the largest territory in the nation, but she's governing fewer people than live in D.C. Oh, and she supports people who want to kill me." I'm not sure how he kept face on that question. If Sarah Palin is a role model for women, I guess we can erase the last 40 years of women's lib. Especially after McCain's remark that "her husband's a pretty tough guy, too." Does this mean that it would really be Todd Palin as VP, or that he would be holding her hand? Or does it imply that she is also a tough guy? Senator Government probably thought up so many good comebacks after the debate was over. I can imagine him lying in bed with Michelle and being like, "yeah, well if she's a role model for women, than I'm Mr. T. Ha! Take that. . . no, you're not Bush, but you're still an old white puckered-faced asshat. . . "

I would like to spend a day, or maybe an evening, with Obama, make him a pizza, have a beer, and talk about music. I think he could use a break; four to eight years as president is going to give him a lot of gray hair. He is welcome into my strange home any time.

A brew update

2008-10-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

I want to inform all listeners-in on this blog that, as noted before, I am back in brewing business. Next week I shall open what has come to be known around the house as "Over the Top Hop," which I may extend to be "Over the Top Hop Parade," and it will be hoppy. It will probably be the last hoppy thing that happens to my carboy for a long time. Plans for now are... well, last week I realized that a freeze is coming soon, and those grapes and apples in the yard aren't gonna like it much, so I better get them drunk 'fore too long. Thus:

a Pyment: honey wine (mead) with grapes

and

a Pyment with the juice of delicious apples

Just one gallon of each, each gallon also containing a pound of local honey and Blanc yeast, now going "blip, blip, blip," (as digital as fermenting gets) inside the insulated box in the kitchen, 'cause who knows what kind of temperature fluctuations go on in there. It should take about a month to finish, and a questionable amount of time before it's completely delicious.

Speaking of wines, Liz's mom is here in Eugene now; from their cousin's wedding they returned bearing three gallon-sized bags FULL OF CHEESE. Their cousin is a cheese broker. So today we took a little trip to King Estate winery and had lunch-- trout club sandwich, sweet potato chips with truffle oil, greens salad, honey thyme ice cream (wow), and the Alsatian flight which included a pinot grigio, Gewurztraminer, and Riesling; the Gewurtz the outright best of the three with the best body, mild tang, and peach/apricot hints that went well with the meal... and we bought a bottle to go with some of the cheese-- goat and manchego, if we have it. I feel rich. I have been cultureshocked. The mountains southwest of Eugene are refreshing, serene (apart from the visible logging), and a place I would consider steading.

I am in the public library at a table and I think there is somebody doing something inappropriate directly across from me, so I'm gonna go now.

Horse of a Different Crater

2008-10-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

This has been a week of implosions. Had my car window smashed in on Saturday; saw the deepest lake in the country; learned of the collapse of a business that was my home and my family for many years, if not my whole life; and now I get to hear the national marketplace squeak and slither to a halt on the TV that blares constantly from the living room while I am in the kitchen experimenting with glutinous rice balls wrapped around sweet bean paste; they look like fried eggs from a charred chicken.

It's a lake that fills the carcass of the volcano called Mount Mazana, and it's so deep you could stack the Sears tower twice at its deepest point and, because of the water displaced, it probably would not stick above the surface. The water is, indeed, bluer and clearer than the sky, which happened to be quite hazy from forest fires burning a few miles off. Liz and I met Tony there on Sunday. The story of how we got there is exciting: My passenger window was smashed in sometime Friday night/Saturday morning, and we temporarily cancelled the trip because nobody could replace the window on Saturday. Oh, and nothing was stolen. So my housemate Trey suggested I go to the junkyard and pull a window; we first opened up the door's guts and extracted the bits and chunks, figured out how it all works. The junk yard happened to have the exact window I needed sitting on their shelves, so for $50 I got a new window and put it in myself (total savings: $110). So we uncancelled our trip to Crater Lake, which was fortuitous becuase Sunday night was the last night the campsites were open for the rest of the season. What luck!

It was a good trip; two good hikes, good beer, great jam around the campfire. Yep. So we got back on Monday. The beer seemed to have stopped fermenting after transfer to the secondary, but it had actually lowered four points gravity (a good thing; means alcohol is being produced) and tastes like... well, to put it mildly, it's DAMN HOPPY. I mean geez.

I can't say that it was a big surprise to hear of Olsson's closing. That said, I was in shock for most of yesterday after receiving links to the two Washington Post articles that gave brief praise and condolences to the passing of a former D.C. icon. So it went; the way of the Pony Express. You can't put wheels and an engine on a horse, and you can't make digital that which relies on physical space and material to exist; that is the Achilles heel of book and record stores that still rely on expensive retail space and an ambulatory customer base. And what could have been done? To compete with Amazon and iTunes is like... well, you understand all that. Monolith.

For Olsson's to not last through the spending season, though, seems to me a harbinger, a real live harbinger. This spending season will probably be deflated by media attention to the stumbling drunk economy and the "black guy or white woman" question (why it's even a question is beyond me; that person, that human being named Sarah Palin is an idiot, while that other human being named Barack Obama can form many complex sentences without tripping over his tongue). My expert prognosis is "not good," possibly "hunker down" in regards to the coming months as we watch Capitol Hill: The Reality Show Where Everybody Loses When One Person Fucks Up on TV.

As a person with EDS (Employment Deficiency Syndrome), I am sarcastically enthusiastic, gleeful to have moved to a place where jobs were already scarce and at a time when my interest lies in an area (making things out of wood, primarily) that requires oodles of money to start up. That's my whine.

I would like to say, to have said, "I have the perfect solution! This bookstore will no longer flounder at the whim of dispassionate corpo-nazis!" And to have had a new direction, some old-world method pulled out of an attic that would actually freshen the business, would force people to get off of the internet and walk, actually walk with their feet and legs and swinging arms, blinking eyes, sweating foreheads, into the store that they know is the best because it's been around longer than any other, because they know a bunch of people who worked there and see them on the street and at concerts, or who met their lovers there, or because it smells like paper acid dust that turns the music in the air into a blanket that feels so good you just have to bring the music home. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? The answer is "YES."

Little House I Live In

2008-09-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

This here's our little section of house.

This here's our little section of yard.

This here's our little section of bed. Well... ok, we have the whole room. And the whole bed.

Eugene? No! Igene!

2008-09-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

My pants are all dirty, the butt pockets and thighs streaked with wet flour handprints. Today I swept my hair off the patio and measured the inside of an old ice chest to make an insulated box for cooking beans and making yogurt. Liz and I joined a buying co-op, and yesterday I got $30 worth of food for $11. This is the news.

Eugene is treating us right. It is not pushy, overwhelming or smelly. . . ok, it is smelly, but when the smell is coming from a big grain mill and it smells like oatmeal for two blocks of the bike ride to the library, it's alright. The smell of thousands of apples in our yard and on our street, now there's a good replacement for the acrid dump truck smell that blasted me in the face everyday when I worked in Bethesda.

The smell of beer brewing in a garage across the street! That's the smell I'd been waiting for. I had my first Oregon homebrew a couple nights ago with none other than the president of the Society for Native Oregon Beers (SNOB; apt, no?), who has the most impeccable, jealousy inducing brew setup. Granted, he's been doing it for 17 years and he's a molecular biologist so he knows how. I'm just impatient to get to a point where I can brew like that. I suppose I need a kit first. And a job.

In the meantime, my occupation has been cooking for nearly every meal with local veggies and thousands of spices. Vegan carrot cake? Yes! Naan? Yes! Bread? Of course! And hopefully I'll be able to go mushroom hunting with Bert, a housemate, who loves to take newcomers into the woods.

Well. Now. Life has been far less interesting to write about since we stopped moving so much and have been focused on nesting and scouring craigslist for jobs every day. If something interesting comes up, or I try a really great beer (Marin IPA, as a matter of fact), I'll do a write up. . .

LIA?

Everything is huge until you see the picture.

2008-08-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is Tumbleweed. He is the most adorable donkey who ever lived.

Bryce Canyon

Nice shot by Liz.

One of those plants in full sexy mode.

Prickly pears in full sexy mode.

Something missed here...

Ribbon Falls, moss shawl.

At the top of the shawl.

Headed out in the morning; note the streak of sunlight illuminating the one rock.

At the very end of the hike. Notice the sweat.

I don't think I'll ever get out of Death Valley.

Those are the Sierra Nevadas blending into the sky there.

California oil field... right among lemon, grape, almone, oregano fields that stretch just as far.

Rolling hills just east of the coast.

Palm tree. Go figure.

Lost In America: In Which Lost In America Falls Into The Grand Canyon

2008-08-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

or: Been Down So Long...
or: That Ol' Sinkin' Feelin'
or: We Did Not Get Swept Away Like Those Other People

I had many titles prepared for this one. You can make up your own if you like.

Lost In America, the errant duo last seen walking among corn-bean-squash rows and stumbling through a Ninjutsu lesson, leave that crazy place about a week ago and return to the site of a festering, multi-billion-year-old gash in the earth. They dress as the sun pokes its nose over the hills, and then they begin a 4,000 foot, 7 mile long descent from the remote northern rim to a campground far below. The trailhead, at about 8,000 feet elevation, goes among pines, oaks, and maples. As the air gets thicker everything shrinks; pines become prickly pears and oaks are replaced by an aloe/yucca/agave type plant that, when "in the mood," empties its thick tresses of life and poots forth a 15-foot tall, arm-thick stalk with bean-shaped pods protruding from the top few feet in a sort of cone. These natural euphemisms can be seen growing in places where even rocks can't find purchase.

Finding themselves thoroughly out of breath, our heroes (well, at least this one) wonder 'why, oh why did we leave that magical farm and the free food and the people who shared so much knowledge with us?' But their descent is distracting; blue and brown and orange lizards scramble from under booted feet, Kaibab Squirrels (a distinct species endemic to the North Rim) chirp and echo, and silence is broken by a large spring tumbling from inside the rock wall. (Incidentally, this particular spring provides all of the water in and around the Grand Canyon, and it only requires pipes, no pumps.) Sweaty from the sun and its red-orange reflection, Lost In America pitches a tent under a stout, twisted cottonwood tree and lays in it for the rest of the day. Night comes with dinner and is cool from a ten-minute rainshower. Their calves and quads sleep off some of the day's wear, recongealing torn striations, tying little knots.

Cold waterfall, Ribbon Falls the next day, a short hike from camp and not the sort of thing you'd expect in a place that looks, from above, to be comprised entirely of orange tones with parched brown, sharp freckles. The water falls a few stories and slaps onto the top of a tall, calcified shawl covered in inch-thick spongy green moss that hides the water flowing down. The visitors there are all from Maryland. There is chitchat. A couple kids throw rocks at the moss wall and make dents, much to their delight, while this particular hero glares at them and wishes them back to Maryland, which he does not miss right now. He gets lost sitting behind the waterfall, up top of the big shawl where the water splashes have made craters, birdbaths, also lined with velvety moss; when the wind blows the waterfall shifts to a different mossy crater. Some of the mist frizzes off and never hits the ground, just evaporates. Maryland kids come up and one just climbs right into one of the craters, making more moss dents. Below, their mom does not want to get wet. What?

That night our heroes boil some water and rehydrate a packet of Mexican-style rice and half a packet of dry bean dip and add peanuts and raisins, wrap it all in flour tortillas and devour. Alarm: 4:30. They want to beat the sun for the return hike. The return hike is a breeze, even after a hot, tossing night, even when they cross paths with four mule teams that have made the trail soft and sinky, left grassy piles buzzing and small lakes of ammonia, wheeeeeeyeew! The top and the taking off of boots and packs is better than pie for breakfast. It's lunchtime, go time.

Las Vegas is a scary place.

The day after, looking at the map and hatching a special, bright blue dream, starting early again to beat the sun, just throwing everything on top of the waterproof cargo bag. Feeling awfully go-ey. The road they take goes up, back up to 8,000 feet, then down to 105 feet below sea level. Death Valley, California, bigger than Rhode Island, hotter than . . . well, hell. Soaked bandanas dry after about ten minutes; there is no sweat, it just evaporates. It's all sorts of colors out; purple, burgundy, red, orange, tan, beige-- a color scheme, if you will. Black rock piles, white salt plains. Mountains from the valley rise 8,000 feet again. The Sierra Nevadas appear around a corner; from 30 miles away they fade right into the light blue sky, and then we are in them, taking a route vaguely shown in the atlas, finding sequoias that get steadily taller, arrows pointing straight up. Those mountains last a long, long time, and we're told it's still a day's drive to our dream. What?

California has everything, kind of like Maryland, just more, bigger, etc. Once the road flattens out, straight west, the same day as the previous paragraph with desert and mountains, there are fields of grapes, red on the left, green on the right, that stretch to the horizon-- this is where your food comes from. Fruit trees grow their perfect afros in perfect rows, rooted into perfectly naked, light brown soil. Those happy cows that make the happy cheese in happy California? They are also rooted soullessly into naked dirt, feeding out of metal baskets. This is not what was expected. After more grapes and some almond trees (yep, trees. Never really thought about nuts like that), more mountains! Tan, dry grass, very rolly, and the sun goes below the visor in the truck. Ten miles from the end, we round a hill and see . . . a thousand-foot-tall wall of cloud where that dream was supposed to be. Ha! We made it, right? Right? Well, yes. That's where we're going now, to the beach to see the ocean. The other one, the Pacific. Ha!

For Your Earification

2008-08-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

8-22-08 - Right now there is a ramshackle bluegrass group forming on the porch of the Henry Miller Memorial Library. A wedding reception is being set up and the air is green with the clink of wine bottles. A couple days ago was deafening wind for 14 hours, too hot for music. I first recognized the pairing of travel and music as we were digested by Trailridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park; a Mozart violin concerto put an exclamation point on every curve, italicized our gasps, a fairly emotional boilover. It was random, at the whim of my music machine.

Do not listen to the Beach Boys Pet Sounds while driving up coastal highway 1 100 miles south of Monterey; it is cloudy. Instead, I advise a more dangerous endeavor: The Firesign Theatre: Waiting For The Electrician, Or Someone Like Him. Civilization, HO!! The surreality of the mountains rising straight up from the seaweed salad with the absurdist commentary on European imperialism provides the proper counterpoint to driving and removes the dimension of time from your movement through the other three. Try to concentrate on both while steering.

The Arcade Fire's Funeral, the most melancholy pop album I've ever heard, is a good way to usher in or out a new phase of most anything; in this case, our departure from the Grand Canyon.

This is the most memorable of what could be a whole year's worth of listening. I'll take requests...

Utah!? No. Itah!!

2008-08-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

[ring]

[ring]

Hello?

THERE IS A BISON IN YOUR FRONT YARD. GET THE DOGS INSIDE, NOW. IT'S A WILD BISON, VERY DANGEROUS.

Liz heard these words this morning. They were true. A bison had wandered over 20 miles from its pasture. Later, the mayor came by the farm wondering if we'd seen him. We've been here a week without a boring day; it proves one of the many phrases boasting the originality of Boulder, Utah: "something interesting every day." It is true. Sometimes you wake up to this:

Or sometimes you come home and find this happening (it might not be what it looks like...):

or this:

going on and you just have to wonder why it's not like this everywhere.

We've been still for a whole week; driven fewer than 100 miles, spent less than $100, which is really changing the stats on our trip, though not impeding us mentally from hitting the coast. The problem is that there's so much to hit before that.

I had my first day in a working kitchen today. I recall a story my grandpa told me (and this may not be entirely factual due to my memory) about being a smartass in his early and brief military career: in the morning inspection lineup, his attire, or perhaps his entire self, wasn't entirely ship-shape. When the inspector came by the admonishment given was, "Hop to it, Olsson!" And so my Grandpa hopped, and was given some large number of hours on KP, Kitchen Patrol, peeling potatoes.

Well, my first day in the kitchen was spent peeling carrots. 70 pounds of Holmesian (gigantic) carrots that I then sliced on the diagonal. Now, I'm not complaining; I asked to work in the kitchen and was given full warning of what I'd be doing, with the option of renegging should I find the task too demeaning for my haughty disposition. It was mostly fun; not fun in the yay-it's-playtime way, but fun in the repetitive-task-that-lets-out-your-obsessive-side way. I skinned those roots good, then sliced them to the rhythm of many rap songs that were blaring in the kitchen, keeping them within one millimeter of the pinky's width I was instructed to cut; the fingers of my right hand curled under, nails guiding the orange shaft as my left hand guided the blade forwards, downwards, then backwards to finish the motion. After completing a carrot I set the high-carbon stainless steel blade aside (good kitchens stock good knives), tossed the ends into a waiting compost bucket, and scooped the ovane discs into an empty commercial-sized sour cream tub lined with a half-gallon bag. I filled a dozen bags. My hands and fingernails are stained orange. Imagine what you would do with six gallons of beautifully sliced carrots.

So I lied. Liz and I both worked in the restaurant last night to help prepare for a wedding. We had been at the farm in the morning continuing our task of weeding, mulching with compost, and now planting comfrey, yarrow, and mint around the 25 or so young fruit trees that line the driveway and irrigation pond. This sounds great, right? It is in one's imagination, but when you get down there and find out that it is not worms that do the dirt-digestion but ants, your mind will change fast. These little so-and-sos have vast and myriad underground fortresses throughout the entire state, and their Capitol Hill and military base is on the farm. They are responsible for some great deeds such as, as mentioned before, creating dirt out of . . . well, other dirt . . . and making sure the hundreds of sunflowers scattered about don't get any other forms of life on them. If you so much as brush up against a sunflower leaf you are sure to acquire one or two quarter-inch black ants running down your collar to check your immigrant status. If you did not pass the citizenship test, ZAP!, you get a little pinpricky bite. Occasionally and undoubtedly you will step onto one of their tannish/pinkish mounds or walk near a sunflower and will instantly have a sandal and leg covered in ants, which is uncomfortable to the point of jumping up and down in a frenzy, even when they don't bite. This, so far, is the only drawback to living here.

As I was saying, Liz and I worked in the restaurant last night preparing for the wedding, observing how different people deal with stress, and learning how to stay out of the way of a stressed out, sleep deprived, hungover chef wielding a hot pan and wearing headphones. The night before last there was a ten-hour power outage in the entire vicinity due to the brigade of thunderheads that have been coming our way everyday for the past three days, unbuckling their steamy undergarments, and quenching the thirsty mosquito eggs that have been waiting for this, the monsoon season, to begin. The power outage is why the chef and several other cooks were hung over; I guess that modern conveniences, when nonfunctional, lead to heavy drinking at three a.m.

I should put a note here about alcohol in Utah! (apparently you can't spell Utah! without an exclamation point, it's just that great). This vast, multichromatic, Mormon-infested (no offense, unless you're a fundy...) land has a law that stipulates that beer brewed in this state (Utah!) cannot contain more than 3.2% alcohol by *weight.* This works out to about 4%, which is barely enough to be antiseptic, not to mention flavorful. So most people drink whisky, which can be found easily enough at any state-run liquor store (the only place you can find out-of-state beer, too). I think this is silly. That's my note about alcohol. Here are some more pictures:

Whiffle Ball Wound

2008-07-30T09:12:00.001-07:00

Day one. Slid into home on a foul ball. . .

Day .... 5? The scab thickens...

Just a couple days ago. Now Liz is obsessed with looking at it, and it's peeling like a snake.

Humans!

2008-07-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

Karen and me and Liz in our getups for the Thursday Cruise.

A fine example of the bikes and riders...

We rode to another park across the city and had a dance party!

Karen and Emma on the trail to Isabel glacier.

Lunch time!

This is where we camped outside of Aspen. It was surprisingly easy.

Colorado's Finest Natural Moments

2008-07-30T08:18:00.003-07:00

Coming in from the north. This is one of about 1,274 pictures that Liz took as she marveled-- her first real Rocky Mountain high.

Highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park.

This is what's known as a tourist trap. See the tourist in action.

Columbines, the state flower.

Snow and ice in July?? You better believe it. On the trail to Isabel glacier.

Hello Bierstadt my old friend. This is the fourteener I hiked when I was 17. It's still there.

Is this your Windows desktop background??

Sweet thunderhead.

This is perhaps the only sunset-ish picture I'll put up, just to spare everybody the awe.

Blurry Wildlife In Colorado

2008-07-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

A herd of elk-- musta been 50 of 'em.

Nice marmot!

Elk on a hill in Rocky Mountain National Park.

My first moose!

Whiffle Ball And Other Extremities

2008-07-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

So what has Lost In America been up to? If you care to know, we spent a whole week in Boulder at our most gracious and hospitable friend Karen's apartment. Boulder has a lot going on if you know where to look; on the outside it's become very upscale commercial, especially along Pearl Street, the pedestrian mall. One relief from this comes on Thursday nights, where informed people gather at a park with their bicycles and ride all around the city yelling "Happy Thursday!" to everyone they pass. Liz and I were fortunate to participate in this. The theme was "80's Prom Night." So, borrowing from Karen's more extensive wardrobe, we got dolled up and rolled out with the largest Happy Thursday crowd yet-- well over 400 people, many of them, er, happier than usual, and dressed to the glittery nines. Not just the people, mind you, but their vehicles as well; Boulder folks are obsessed with bikes. The coolest I think, besides the ones trailing stereo systems blasting Bon Jovi, was one which had two stems; one in the regular part at the handlebars, and another below the seat so that the front of the bike can swivel independently of the rear, and so can be on the street and the sidewalk at the same time.

Another diversion that I have not enjoyed since I was about 8 is whiffle ball. You know, the plastic yellow bat and the hollow plastic ball; what a modern invention! That game is dangerous, even when the participants are mostly math majors (I will say, they can throw a mean curveball... well, one of them can). You can check the blog for a couple pictures of my great wound.

Boulder is a beer town, and I could bore you to drunkenness with my account of all the great ones I tried. The best was probably Collaboration Not Litigation by Avery/Russian River (that's right, it's a blend...). That's all I'll tell you here. Of more interest are our plans for the future that have maintained only one part of their original form:

So we joined WWOOF, which is a great acronym for WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Basically you can go anywhere in the world where there is something called "organic" and work a set amount of hours per week, typically 25, in exchange for room & board, which can be anything from, "we have a cabin on a mountain and supply food for you to cook," to, "you can camp under a tree by the wilderness, and eat meals from the restaurant that your work will supply." This last option is the one that we have chosen and will begin this weekend, duration to be anywhere from two weeks to x number of months... probably not that many though.

But where are you now?!?!? you may be asking. If you're that curious, we're about 5 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. A variety of factors contributed to our arrival:

1) We were going to help a woman build a cob house (that's sand, mud, and straw, not corn skeletons), but she was a major flake and too busy to give us any reasonable response to our queries. We even went to her town to try to find her. It was a small town (about 2,000 people) and even her coworkers could not locate her. I presume her to be an internet ghost.

2) We were going to hike to Conundrum hot springs in Colorado, the highest public hot springs in the U.S., but the 9 mile path was washed out in parts and inadvisable according to the Forest Service. The night before we spent in Aspen, the stomping grounds of the late Hunter S. Thompson. That town in no way represents him. It is a richass ski town, where nothing costs fewer than ten dollars (even a sandwich).

3) After these two things fell through, we went to Mesa Verde, recommended by our friend Emma with whom we stayed in Denver. Mesa Verde is the geological beginning of what is inaccurately deemed the Southwest in spaghetti Westerns, which are actually set in Italy. Though we saw some Italian tourists, we also saw some old American Indian dwellings that date back to 1300 A.D.

4) To continue our tour of the Southwest, we chose Chaco Canyon, another abandoned ancestral Pueblo abode. We ran into a problem: the unfortunate combination of Hurricane Dolly's long, wet fingers and a 20 mile dirt road, meant to deter random tourists from eroding the already rickety stone foundations of the kivas and pueblos. We didn't make it, to say the least. Luckily, just 120 miles away was a great, cheap hostel with free food.

And now I sitting in a bed in a real house owned by Liz's Mom's friend Jill and her partner Richard. We have used this house as a jumping off point for the local tourist attractions, just to give them a chance. A few days ago in down town Santa Fe, which is 97% artists shops (also known as "galleries," but really, they're stores), Liz and I walked into the Spanish Market, where there was a stage set up for musical acts. We caught most of a Latin pop/rock act where the singer/guitarist had basically his entire family as guests. They weren't half bad either. For his last act, he said, "my last guest has just gotten back from a tour in China. He's an up and coming musician, just amazing, blah blah blah, sweeping the ocean. . . Please welcome . . . Esteban!"

I don't know if you've ever been flipping channels and seen an infomercial where a full-bodied man wearing all black is playing a classical guitar, Flamenco style, and has fingernails on his right hand that would make a voguing drag queen ashamed. If you've seen this, then you know who Esteban is. I didn't think he was real until a few days ago, but now I believe.

Esteban is about 6'2". He wears all black and a flat brimmed hat with a band of silver dots going around it. He has a barrel chest, skinny legs, and biceps that used to be big but are not aging gracefully. His voice recalls Johnny Cash's singing voice: deep, rich, ballsy. When he talks, he talks about himself, and says things like, "OKAY, I'm gonna get goin' in a few minutes here, and I'm gonna tear you up!" or, "My band's gonna be ready in a few minutes and we're gonna destroy you. But first, I'm gonna play this love song, do a solo song here, it's an arrangement of one of the greatest love songs ever written, it's called Besame Mucho." Only he doesn't say, "Besame Mucho," he says, "Bess amay moocho," without any hint of Spanish inflection. With a name like Esteban, you'd expect that Esteban would have some Spanish in him. Nope, he's from Pittsburgh, and he announces this freely along with his life story as a guitarist, which is as believable as his voice. Apparently he pestered Andres Segovia ("Maestro") with anonymous notes until confronting him and being accepted into the Master level classes at Segovia's school in Spain. Then he got hit by a drunk driver and couldn't use his left hand. After ten years and losing sight in one eye, he's back. Oh yes, he's back, and with more covers of old pop tunes than ever, done up in twiddling guitar intros that last 5 minutes. He has his family as a band, too. One of his daughters is a fine violinist who has also mastered dancing while playing. Only, when she dances, she moves her upper body on an axis that is not connected to her legs, which Newton's laws say should be holding her upright. It's a strange sight, especially as she's the only one wearing a tight Flamenco dress.

Apart from that, it's been driving around this gigantic old quarry that is New Mexico. Actually it's been formed mostly by volcanic activity that took place a million years ago, covering the area in up to 1,000 feet of ash that then compressed into rock and worn away to form high desert plateaus and low, blankety green valleys edged by red and ochre cliff faces.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we head north and west yet again. You'd think that with this much northing and westing we'd have hit Alaska by now, if not the West Coast, but this is a big place full of uncertain destiny. When shall I write again? From where? Who knows?

Best of all your worlds,
LIA

South Dakota is Corn and Rocks

2008-07-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

This could be the Corn Palace... you decide!

The retail floor of the Corn Palace.... and you could watch the shoppers from a safe distance! All of those emblems along the top are made of corn. And the outside of the picture above.

Liz says, "we're going over there!"

Over there.

Here's our crib!

Here's looking down from our crib. That path at the bottom's how we got there. Notice the red layer-- that's a different mineral deposit from some geological change many hundreds of thousands of years ago. All of the layers are at about the same height. There's your lesson for the day.

Here's looking out from our crib when we got there.

Me singing loudly. No echo. Those spikes behind me and to the left are what we tried to get past the next morning.

Note the moon.

Lost In America: The Midwest Eats And Goes On A Stroll

2008-07-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

Last thing you knew I was headed west, straight and to the south, aimed for a state with a reputation for large expanses of desolation and not much else but a couple monuments. Interstate 90 draws a straight line across South Dakota like a well-handled etch-a-sketch; the state is bookended by two towns: Mitchell in the east and Wall in the west (though perhaps bookended isn't apt here; I doubt there are many books anywhere in the state). The latter two towns get their expendable revenue from one source each: tourists.

Thousands of corn-addled minivan families pull into the diagonally aligned parking spaces surrounding the Corn Palace in Mitchell and Wall Drug in Wall; the latter you may have heard of, as there are signs for it all around the world, or perhaps you got lost in the Midwest and took the road that had the most signs to one place. Though the themes of these monoliths of Americana are different, the atmosphere is the same: BUY. The Corn Palace has murals covering the inside and outside of the building that are made entirely out of (you guessed it) corn. It has glass cases with various decaying elements of the history of the building itself and pitcures of famous country singers who visited the building in its past iterations (corn murals, unlike strawbale, decompose over time and must be rebuilt to reflect, umm, America at its corniest). The main room in the Corn Palace is an arena where I assume some sort of sporting event or beauty contest takes place, but on off days it is converted into a giant retail floor with a labyrinth of aisles and shelves holding items that would have been appealing to Wally Cleaver. (On a side note, I have been told that I look like Wally. Do not assume that I have his taste in kitsch.) We bought postcards and left.

Our previous host, Beth, and her family had warned Liz and I about South Dakota: "It's so flat, you'll be bored out of your _____ [insert plural body part here]," or something like that. I didn't believe it, having driven across flat places before without issue.

Flat. Flat South Dakota, the flat part of the shallow inland sea that covered that part of the country so many eons ago. Flat. I guess. I don't actually remember. We drove several hundred miles with the anticipation of something called Badlands. Before our initial departure, my uncle Tony had told me about an encounter with a lone buffalo on a 115 degree day in the Badlands. The way he told it I was sweating at the end, and it was decided that we should go. They're on the western end of South Dakota, just east of Wall, and they're very earth toned.

I have to stay subdued here to avoid giving a maudlin account of "the toothlike pinnacles and unearthly, savage landscapes that come at you before you're prepared to take it all in." I can't freak out the way we did when the road started twisting and undulating between all these... badlands. I don't know how else to call them. They're not really rocks, I think, they're like really hard mud that used to be rock. They're not mountains, I think, because they're only a couple hundred feet tall. They're badlands, I don't know how else to explain it. It's like a microcosmic mountain range.

We drove through the park first, agog at every turn, then gathered some water and other supplies and went to the visitor's center to ask about trails. It turns out the actual trails are short and few. The woman we inquired to looked at us with a cheery face and said, "you can hike anywhere! Just watch out for buffalo." Our response was that of skeptical shoppers: "So we don't need a path or anything?"

"Nope."

That's it. You can go anywhere in the park. She didn't even tell us that we should know how to get back. We left the building feeling so liberated that our own dreams of hiking in the park seemed restrictive. We trucked back to this picnic spot that had a backcountry log, so we could write our names in the book and put a note saying where we were headed in case we didn't come back. Not that we knew where we were going. The rules were that you had to camp 1/2 mile or more from any road or trail or trace of humanity. We parked at the base of some badlands, loaded our packs with water, food, tent, and sleeping bags, and walked around a bend.

It was getting on evening, and we were walking along the small valleys between the slopes, on dry stream beds and the few feet at the base where no plants grow. At first it was fairly open space, but gradually got slimmer until we rounded one bend and realized that soon there would be no flat space to pitch a tent. My instinct said "go up," so I clambered up the side of one of these slopes to the top, maybe 60 feet, and found a little ridge with some flat spots and a good view. Liz followed shortly, using all four limbs, as had I, grasping at the lightly rooted scrub plants that must live on imaginary water reserves; the mud/rock I've described is so because there is absolutely no moisture to be found, on land or in the air. The slopes are cracked, dessicated, and tend to give way with little incentive, so an even center of gravity is important on the steep parts.

Safely atop the ridge, walking along and looking for a good place to camp, the silence rose as the sun descended and revealed on the horizon a swath of deep plum colors, the aura of the earth. No city light pollution, no traffic smell, nearly nothing at all around us but badlands to the north and west, prairie to the south and east, and the moon above. We made chili from a mix and some fresh onions and garlic, burned some of it to the bottom of the camp-stove pot, ate, and got in the tent, still agog. It was cool enough, the moon was bright enough to cast a shadow and blot out many of the stars. I put my head down and closed my eyes.

They opened seconds later, wide, and my torso convulsed with my heartbeat. "What was that noise?!" I knew there were no bears around (I am afraid of bears), but there could be mountain lions, right? We definitely saw coyote tracks on the way in. This was my thinking for the next hour or so as I imagined how I would fend off a large mammalian intruder. Eventually I settled down and slept a bit, until something else woke me up. It was Liz. She said, "the stars!"

Even through the tent screen the skyscape was more intense than I was prepared for. When I stuck my head outside of the tent and looked up my lungs were emptied, literally. To describe how it looked is impossible, but suffice it to say that I saw numerous shooting stars and four satellites within ten minutes; to spot a satellite under normal rural circumstances is rare, even if you know what to look for. I'd never seen more than one at a time, but there they were, little dots of white shimmying around the sky like they were trying to connect the dots.

Our morning routine, breakfast, was accompanied by the flutey bays of some coyotes chiming in the 5:30 hour, and after we scrambled down the least steep slope to the ground, we started following a dry stream bed that had been recently traveled by the audible-but-invisible animals. Liz's sense of adventure took us across some prairie towards the pinnacles in hopes of finding our own little Northwest Passage. Prairie grass may look short from the road, but it is waist high and full of burrs and seeds that want nothing more than a ride on your socks.

This is where it got tougher; I'll give you the highlights:

We followed a streambed, figuring it had to come from up and had perhaps worn something down to "passable" status. Along this stream we saw, in several bushes, the leg bones, spine, and skull of a deer (way cool, just like in the cartoons). After taking several impassible turns, we reached the end of the line; had we tried to scale the side of our obstable (which I took a stab at), it's possible that we might still be there. Only light creatures with specifically designed claws should climb those things.

That's it. We made it back to the truck at 10:30 am, after 4.5 hours of adventuring, and went to Wall Drug for their famous 5 cent cups of coffee and to experience a shocking recalibration to the ways of human living.

We are now in Boulder, Colorado, which you will be able to read about on the blog fairly soon (once the memories are all recovered/organized-- I gotta write more often). Boulder is great and says HELLO and HAPPY THURSDAY. Perhaps I'll make it a choose-your-own-adventure.... the next episode has actually been in the works since before this installment, and contains a surprise. It's like a Tarantino movie...

Hot but dry, sore but happy,

Lost In America

And I have to include a call for support, this time not for a ride-buddy, but for prayers and donations. Our friend Padma lost nearly her entire family in a car accident in India and has been shouldered with the immense burden that comes with this sort of tragedy. I've been asked to spread the word, and I'm already impressed at the amount of support that has been sent in every way. For more information: http://www.realitycharity.com/view_item.php?listing_id=3450 . You can also check out the Facebook group "Support for Padma," if that's how you prefer. Thanks for your time! --A

Princeton, WI, in random order 'cause it's all so great!

2008-07-15T11:33:00.001-07:00

This is the cover for the next album by The Brussats (they're sweeping the nation!) L to R: Sherry, me, Mary

An ok picture of the fine timber framing job done by Glen.

Wood stove/bread & pizza oven, and major incentive for my return.

Nice big kitchen! Nice cork floors, dudes!

The house, snapped hastily while being sucked dry by mosquitoes.

Master bedroom & ceiling fan-- we installed the one in Claire's room.

window and exposed straw bale truth window-- that's what the walls are really made of!

Bathroom sink

Claire's new bedroom

In full anti-deerfly garb...

We loooooove the new cork floor!

Clockwise from top left: Glen, head-sized turnip, Claire, Mary, Sam, Spencer

Claire in the middle, as Martina Josefina Catalina Cucaracha at the Green Lake Public Library and Odeon.

Floodwaters receding from downtown Princeton

clockwise from top left: plain, olive, cardamom loaves fresh outta the oven

Chicagoland

2008-07-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

Lunch prepared in Glencoe: Gazpacho with cilantro and avocado, grilled cheese with my bread, mustard, pickles, goat and cow cheddar cheeses.

Millenium Park in Chicago, watching Orchestra Baobab- most danceable!

Statue of King Lear in Chicago

I think he took the David Bowie thing just a little too far...

Hunk-o-rama!

What a great way to spend a day!

The craziest float of them all!

Lost In America:

2008-07-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends of Lost In America!

I vaguely remember the last time I wrote, something about bread and beer. Well, it turns out that not much has changed. No, that's not entirely true; a lot has changed except for the bread. Another loaf is going in the oven pretty soon. It's a sweet one, with applesauce, raw honey, and nutmeg. Tomorrow is a roasted garlic loaf.

We are not lost in Chicago anymore; no siree, we headed out nearly two weeks ago for Wisconsin (you're right, it's not exactly west). Wisconsin, unlikely as it may seem, is the Eden of the Brussat name in the states; back in the 1870s, a Brussat who had been mayor of Koenigsburg, Germany (after fleeing France) came to Wisconsin and set up shop as a cobbler; that is, he made shoes and not delicious fruit-and-crisp desserts. The Brussats have mostly scattered since, setting up shop in DC, Providence, Arizona, and a nebula of other places (I think Tony holds the record for living in at least 7 distinct areas since I've been alive). The Brussats we stayed with in Wisconsin are actually Mary & Glen & Claire Elliot, but they'll have to wait a paragraph for chronology's sake...

You (the royal "you"), not being from Wisconsin, may hear the name and think such things as "cold," "Packers," and "cheese!" and while you'd be right on the money, there is so much more going on in Wisconsin than you think. Madison, the capitol, is hipper than you'd expect from a capitol city (sorry, Providence), brimming with brews, arts, and lakes. Liz and I decided to bum a couch there before going up to visit the cousins, and stayed in a student house that has Taco Tuesdays; how fortunate that we were there on that very day! Instead of the usual beans or meat substitute, we prepared some onions, carrots, and beets/greens from that day's farmer's market (there's one just about every day)-- and I managed to proselytise a beet skeptic into a beet worshipper! We also received the blessings of a local schizophrenic man while throwing the frisbee. He claimed either one or both of the following: that the frisbee floated like an angel from god, or that he himself was an angel sent by god. I told him we were throwing the frisbee all across the country. He said to Liz, "You GO, girl!"

The next part of our trip lasted nearly a week, which is long enough to become sedentary and not want to leave a place that is good, even if there is a World Summit of Deer Flies and Mosquitoes taking place in the front yard. Glen & Mary & Claire Elliot are in the final throes of a four-year house-building convulsion; the remaining work, which is minimal compared to the last few years, is being coughed out in little bits; a cork floor here, a ceiling fan there. In fact, the latter two activities are what Liz and I did during our stay. So what's hip about this house, you ask? It's a straw bale house, for one. For two, it's been built entirely by Glen, Mary, Claire, and their community friends using as local and "green" materials as possible (hence the cork floor; while not local, it is a continuously regenerating material, and thus sustainable; also very pretty to look at). If you are now asking, "What the ____ is a straw bale house? Is it susceptible to horses?" the answer is: the house is timber framed, and walled using tamped and baled straw (not hay, so no danger of equine damage). Straw provides a crazy amount of insulation, so the house stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer-- it was about 70 in the house while the weather outside was 85-90, and that's with no a/c.

OK, end of sermon. Build a good house if you get a chance, that's all. I'm gonna.

The Elliots and their two chipper, loving dogs Sam and Spencer live outside of Princeton, WI, which is the liveliest small town in the world. What a community! Mary and her sister (also a Brussat cousin) Sherry run a book/antique store called Pastimes, and they know everybody on the main street; when the flood waters rose a month ago, everybody came out and helped; when it was time to enlist help building the straw bale house, it was friends, not contracted labor, that came to the straw-tamping potlucks. This is why we're Lost In America, sniffing out a place where home isn't just a house and a yard, but the cheesily romantic description I just set forth. Home is where the party's at.

I could go on about the last week. In fact, I could have stretched the last seven days into seven weeks. It was a home. Anyhow, the fun parts: I made three of my best loaves yet, drank some wonderful Wisconsonian beer (New Glarus has some good ones-- Uff Da bock, especially), talked some good music, and got to see under a dog's skin (ok, that wasn't so great; Spencer, in his lustful chase after a frisbee, collided with a broken branch and tore himself open under the right armpit. He's doing fine, just wobbly, stitched up, and unable to chase a frisbee for a week or so; I would compare this to having my left hand in a cast, unable to play the guitar: torture). There were two nights of fireworks, two house parties with great people, a parade, and a theater production at a library starring Claire Elliot as Martina Josefina Catalina Cucaracha, a young cockroach who's ready to give her leg in marriage, but unable to find the right suitor. Needless to say, Claire should get a Tony award and a degree in entymology for her creative interpretation of the body language of a young female cockroach.

Yesterday (I think it was Tuesday) we left with many goodbyes, this time north and west, across the great Mississippi River to St. Paul, Minnesota. Our friend Beth lives here with her folks; her dad is on the board of a local bike shop and knows all the good beer, and there are a lot of groovy things happening. The Minneapolis art museum has an artist-designed mini-golf course, and there's a zine workshop, and a drive-in theater, and... well, probably too much to do by Saturday or Sunday when we'll head off, definitely west, decidedly well-hosted, destined for badlands, a boulder, more beer, and maybe some more Brussats!

With yeast in my eye and doughy wishes for you all,

Lost In America

PS: there has been a Dave Ellsworth spotting! For those that know him, his picture is in a book called All My Life For Sale. Apparently Professor Ellsworth took part in an ebay experiment and bought this guy's jacket (not a bad jacket...). This guy then visited him and took a picture of Sir Ellsworth wearing said jacket. Liz saw this picture in the book at Pastimes and emitted a loud exclamation/profanity and showed it to me, whereupon I emitted the exact same exclamation/profanity. Dave Ellsworth, Esquire, you've been seen!

Surfin' The Amber Waves Of Grain

2008-06-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

I have 22 minutes to explain, that's when the timer goes off and I have a few seconds to collect the oven mitts and take the bread out. Yes, it's 12:30 (central time) a.m. I have to bake, as the menu for tomorrow includes freshly baked bread - grilled cheese, mustard, and pickle sandwiches with gazpacho; there's a farmer's market in Glencoe, right around the corner from our hosts, Liz's cousins Howard and Gay. I anticipate many watering mouths as we prepare a fresh cold tomatoey, chivey, garlicky lunch. Post lunch plans include two (countem) two free concerts.

Glencoe, I must explain, is a well-to-do little burg a bit north of Chicago. Chicago is a very big city, and it's summer. Apparently this means that all the taxpayers' monies go to these huge events that draw no fewer than a galaxy of families and their full strollers. Today's Taste of Chicago, for example, had Liz and I squeezing by masses of people and trying to avoid any flying meat products. It was a long day. My feet feel like bricks of unrisen whole grain bread (14 minutes left). But at least there was beer.

This journey of ours, this Lost In America gig, has been accompanied by another journey, and a longtime dream of mine; a beer tour of the country. Let me tell you, there is no shortage of good beer wherever you might land; let this be a consolation to you all, even you non-drinkers, as a city with good beer is a clue that other good things abound.

It started in Rochester with a Pilsner and Tripel brewed by my best buddy Mark. What a way to start a tour: free beer, and most excellent at that. In Burlington I discovered two brands: the Rock Art Brewery made an excellent, heady double ESB, and another, MacNeill's out of Brattleboro (right near our friends in Newfane) brews this special called Old Ringworm. I bought it for the label, which appeared homemade, and was pleased by its dark and mild yet wholesome flavor. I tried Waterloo Dark in Ottawa but was kinda disappointed; apparently all the good beer happens in Quebec. Next stop, Michigan. Wowee! The sailor recommended the recently founded Right Brain Brewery, an outta-tha-way place behind a salon with plenty of kick-your-legs-out space, board games, dart boards, and a selection of beer that made this beer nut's jaw unhinge a bit. I first had their cask beer; a fine summer wheat that had been combined with - get this - kiwis before casking. It should be served at every Little League game for a good time. OK, so there's that, and there's a beer called Little Italy, an ale brewed with some honey and SWEET BASIL. The bartender said some guys dipped their pizza crusts into it. It tasted like the Tuscan hills. I wouldn't drink it ever again, but don't take that the wrong way. This brewery has it right, and I wish I could bring it with me. On our way out of Indiana was Three Floyd's; I had the Behemoth and then bought a bomber of the Blackheart; both had that special touch, that feeling in the mouth that covers all the taste buds and goes right into your nostrils; it's a sensation that sets the fine beers apart from the superb.

Here in Chicago, Liz and I went to Wrigleyville (they have funny names for places around here) for a flight at Goose Island brewpub, and as inventive and flavorful as their beers were, the glasses had that neglected sponge smell that just permeates everything and kinda ruined the experience. I also sampled their cask ale, a blonde, that tasted too much like vinegar to be good... probably an experiment gone awry.

Anyhow, I just took the bread out of the oven, and it's now 1:00, and the bread smells like a good bedtime. I hope you are all sleeping as soundly as Liz is right now.

toasty,
Lost In America

Photos from Michigan!

2008-06-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Our friend, the legendary sailor Brendan. He is alive, and does not have a two year old child in Key West. He's only been out of school for a year!

This is how we roll. Notice the Wheatena. This is the greatest breakfast cereal known to our four dimensions. It is not very good with dried coconut chunks, pineapple, and dried banana.

From the top of Sleeping Bear Dunes, right over Lake Michigan. Take that, Big Rig!

This is Liz's posse from Mexico. They're pretty fancy.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION DE MARIAS

Lost In America: Back In The U.S.S.A.

2008-06-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

6-20-08
DON PARDO:
Hi everybody! It's the Lost In America Show!

[cue intro music - a choir of kazoos zooting "Southern Man" by Neil Young.]

It's been ten days since the first episode of Lost In America, and boy do we have some catching up to do.

[fade intro music, lights. Cue single spot on host Lost In America.]

Our time in Newfane ended as Liz and I departed north into the staggeringly green heart of Vermont and coasted into Burlington. We don't actually know anybody there, but we had arranged to sleep on this person's couch through the inimitable couchsurfing.com. Her name was Tori and she was an all around chill person with a lovable (if trash-rooting) dog named Cassidy. Her Burlington is a great town, with a pedestrian strip, good brews (try Rock Art), a lovely farmer's market, and the opportunity to take inadvertent 20-mile bike rides, which I did.

OK, so Burlington was great. Liz and I had decided to take Lost In America international, and booked it up to Ottawa to stay with another couch.. err.. host. This is where it gets interesting (i.e. PG-13). OK. So Devan is a cool guy. Yeah, he works at Starbucks, but they're "great to work for," because of all the benefits (that don't include free wi-fi, wtf?). We get to his house a while after meeting him at his job because he had to clean up the "horrendous mess" left by his housemates. So it smelled kinda funny, and the cat had decided that clean was not interesting enough and left a strange orange mass on the carpet in the living room. We ended up taking an unoccupied room in the house (a "college" house, need I say). At first it was a bit awkward getting to chat with Devan and his housemate, Drew, but after a grocery trip it was getting better. Long story short, Andrew was starting an online business selling sex toys, of which he had two GIGANTIC BOXES in his room. WOW. It actually gets better, but I can't put it in an e-mail (no, it's not what you think!). Ottawa is a very bikable town with some very interesting architecture; the Museum of Civilization (phase II?) has lots of curves and fountains, and I suppose is mimicking the surrounding landscape, a river and some hills. There's also the Parliament building, very ornate, even at a distance. We didn't take any pictures, so I have to use my words. Actually, I think there is like one picture of Canada from the Mackinaw bridge as we were coming back into the States. Canada is camera shy.

From Ottawa we drove a day and camped by some waterfalls. We didn't know that there was a Convention Of French-First Mosquitos And Blackflies going on right at our campsite. We were out of bug repellant. Go figure. Remember that e-mail I sent from Mexico about the mosquitos in the cloud forest? It was like that. Apparently, annoying insects are tourrorists, too.

"Canada" (Algonquin for both "Expensive" and "Rain"), has succeeded in making me not really care whether I return or not. It's not that there aren't pretty parts and good people, but I think that the good ol' US of A will do me just fine. And that's the extent of my nationalism.

So now we're in Traverse City, Michigan. Last night we hung out (yet again) on a boat with our good friend Brendan who is still alive, contrary to popular belief. I have a picture of his dreadlocks as proof. He now wears suspenders with skull and crossbones on them, and the ship, the tall ship Manitou, doubles as a B&B (bunk & breakfast). Today I think we'll be going to some immense sand dunes, then camping somewhere close by before heading south-er to Grand Rapids for more adventures.

[APPLAUSE]

Love,

Lost In America, now with more Web enhancement

Pic Trips 1#

2008-06-15T17:22:00.001-07:00

The view from the Steepest Hill In The World. After that curve it just drops!

The view from the house on Cayuga Lake in Ithaca. Nice flower garden!

Traipsing up a gorge in Ithaca. I wouldn't call it gorgeous.....

Eerie picture of Uncle Dave, Victoria, and I, sunset in Prospect Park, Providence.

The zipline right outside our cabin door in Newfane, VT!

Lost In America: This Ain't No Digest

2008-06-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

Greetings! Or as they say in Massachusetts, "Wicked Hi!"

6-10-08Hello friends and family (of which you should consider yourself both)! I write to you from the shady porch of a house in Newfane, Vermont, where the current temperature appears to be "wilt." Liz and I are entering the second week of our westward tour which, thus far, has involved going north and east; only one of those directions fits the prescription of our trip, but we're wily that way.

We started driving north on 270 last Monday, Liz snoozing off the morning's rush and I thinking about Leaving Maryland For A While. As the hills got hillier, the knot of morning traffic unravelled, and the Appalachians of Pennsylvania drew themselves up under the wheels of my truck, I readjusted my butt on the seat and stuck my arm like Superman out the window.

Pennsylvania was a rocky blur. Our first stop was Rochester to visit Mark "Airzooka" McAllister and his homebrew emporium. Mark brews a damn good beer. I hope he turns out to be as good a doctor as he is a brewer. The Airzooka, if you're wondering, is a device that shoots out a concentrated ball of ... you guessed it ... air. Being hit by one of these has been described as "being punched by a ghost." They work great on squirrels.

After a couple nights in Rochester, we zipped over to a rustic house on Hatch Lake, near Hamilton, NY. Liz and I took a lovely bike ride (yes, we brought our bikes along) into town and found The Steepest Hill In The World on the way. That night we saw the latest (and probably the last) installment of the Indiana Jones movies. I had forgotten about the silly religious/supernatural/face-melting events, and seeing these effects, including Harrison Ford's jowls, with more dots-per-inch than ever just made them sillier. During the dark bits, Liz clung to my arm the way the girlfriend clings to the boyfriend's arm during the dark bits in a movie theater. It was classic, if not reflexive.

From Hatch Lake we went southwest to Ithaca to stay the night with a friend of Liz's from her study abroad program. Kaile lives in the house she grew up in, right on Cayuga Lake. The house has many sets of stairs inside and out, and lots of things hanging from the ceiling and walls, and lots of flowers everywhere, and at least 174 bedrooms. We went, with Kaile's 13-year-old dachsund Chili, to a gorge. It was quite dashing. The next morning we left for Providence and hung out with my uncle Dave ("Dadui") and his wife Victoria; my aunt, as it were. And now we're hanging out in cabins on hills in Vermont with our friends Jesse and Caitlin! Wow!

If you were to trace our trip to this point, the line would look like we're trying to draw a hammer. We aren't really, and you'll have to forgive us because we are Lost in America. Our goal is to visit as many people as possible, and not to drive for at least a day for every day of driving. We're going to Burlington on Friday or Saturday, and heading (finally) west through Canada on Monday. I'm not going to reveal the rest of the trip because that would make this series of e-mails "We Know Where We're Going America," and that's just a mouthful of bunk.

Oh! I have to tell you about this dream I had: I was supposed to be playing a guitar solo with the Blake High School Jazz Band, but Frank Zappa was playing a concert at the same time, so I guiltily skipped out on the solo and tried to see the show. I wound up late for the show, only catching the last number, a highly-harmonized choral version of "The Duke of Prunes," that rocked. After the show I found Frank at a party and shook his hand. He gave a very weak handshake. Too bad.

So I'm living the dream, dreaming the life, and theing dream life. I hope THAT YOU are too! I will probably put these things up on a blog soon where I can put up pictures, because I've taken some pictures that you should probably see that will stimulate your ocules more than these paragraphs. If you don't want these e-mails, you should tell me and I'll try to take you off the list.

Much love, sweaty hugs, and good vibraphones,

Aaron... er, Lost In America