where's MY hate blog???

No kidding, what's with this shit?

Did I vote for Nader? Yes I did; the year I didn't vote for the lesbian separatists.

Do I not post porn? I most certainly do.

Do I not embrace political, cultural and sexual diversity? I do; indeed I do.

Am I not an outspokenated agnostic minority female WHO PASSES?? I is.

Do I not swear enough? PLEASE!!!

YET MJ RATES A* HATE SITE AND

I DON'T????

I WANT A CHRISTIAN HATE SITE RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!

Ok fine. I've been pushed. You want depravity?


I gotcher depravity right here, bucko!



KIDDIE PORN!
















CARE BEARS!
FISHER - PRICE!

MY EX-HUSBAND!
SESAME STREET!
PRECIOUS MOMENTS!

RAGGEDY ANN AND ANDY!
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE!
BALLOON ANIMALS!
A MEAN TURKEY!

OPIE!!!!!!!!!

So come on, conservative fundamentalists, I know you're out there; I can smell ya!
I know you read me!
GIVE ME MY HATE SITE OR GIVE ME




...WELL, NOT DEATH, BUT SOMETHING PRETTY DANGED BAD.

(my own hate site would be nice, hint hint.)

________________
*bullshit

the worlds cutest ugly american!

The Stainless Steel Amazon and I went up to Canada a couple of days ago for a girls day out-birthday lunch (The Amazon's).
I have always liked Canada. I have always liked BC. But mother of all that's holy whats the fucking deal with the damn freeways??

The existing highway infrastructure in BC was designed by the Amish, I swear to God. You cannot build a freeway serving one of the major cities in the world by simply paving over the track where the cattle go down to the creek. Furthermore a major highway system should be built out of material somewhat sturdier than the aquarium gravel being used presently. I know whereof I speak, too; I grew up in Oregon pre-sales tax. Our roads were a mess. But they had the distinct advantage of being designed by people at least dimly aware that there would be, you know, big trucks and lots of cars traveling over them.

It isn't just the TransCanada, either...every surface road in the damn province is a mess. No matter if it's just gone down in a brand-new development; in less than one years' time it will look like Sherman tanks have been using it. BC, you need to take a long, hard look at what's really going on in your highway department or the ministry of silly roads or whatever the hell you call it. The administrator with all the offshore accounts and the brand new LandRover XL? You kill.

And now, the drivers.
No, now, really. My complaint with Canadian drivers up to this point was that they came down to the US and got all nervous and did stupid shit like stopping dead in the middle of the road to check their maps. Yes, really. I know this is a different country and all but the rules of the road are exactly the same. Still, you can understand people getting nervous, right?

I have had to revise this opinion. After this last trip up I have had to admit that the stereotype is true: these people are all drunk. Every single one of them. Drunk, wearing dark glasses, reading a book and getting a hand job. As soon as they get behind the wheel, man they're like 'Here, hold my martini. OO, use that burney lube; I'm likin' that shit, eh?'

The entire trip up and back was one long near-accident! Huge goddamn semi trucks switching lanes at random! Signals? Please! We laugh! Ha! Signals are for the weak! Cars passing you DRIVING ON THE SHOULDER, no, really. Two wheels in the grass, folks, doing 70 fricken' mph! (8522K) Passenger vehicles swapping in and out of the same lane of traffic three times in rapid-fire succession! Just for...what, something to break up the monotony? At 90 mph?? (3421 K) Drivers suddenly slowing down in the fast lane apropos of nothing! Lane drift..? Oh my God the lane drift. Do you all have Parkinsons? Have you ever been curious about why there's a line down the middle of the road? A huge lineup of cars CAUSED BY A DEER GRAZING OFF TO ONE SIDE OF THE FREEWAY!!! A DEER! BAMBI WAS EATING LUNCH ON THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY! OH MY GOD HONEY LOOK ITS A DEER! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE, PLEASE!!!

The on-and-off ramps are a joke. Simply a joke. These were designed by a depressed child with a Spirograph. And everyone thinks that if they shut their eyes and floor the gas somehow a space will magically open up for them in traffic. When it doesn't they a. go up in a huge cheese-scented ball of flame and Pakistanis, or b. slam on the brakes and pile up two and three cars in a bunch at the end of the ramp and honk and gun their engines. This is for real. I have never seen anything like this shit.

Now, were it Christmas shopping season? Or Monday 5pm rush? I could almost understand it.

It wasn't.

THIS ALL TOOK PLACE AT 2PM ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

Now it doesn't help matters that whoever designed this freeway system anticipated a future population of maybe twenty thousand souls whose prinicipal means of transportation was the oxcart. 'Laughably inadequate' is an accurate description here. And if I had to drive that shit every day I'd get a little frustrated after awhile, I know. The highway is simply not designed to handle the amount of traffic it gets. But you'd think with the enormous whack of cash the provincial government takes out of everyones' pocket they'd do something about this, right? I mean, it has to be affecting trade? Not to mention health and safety...? But all that money seems to do is to pay for a couple of crews of mouth-breathers to go around and scatter orange barriers at random. Maybe close off a couple of lanes of traffic. Then they disappear, and once they've disappeared NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

Now weirdly, this is all (not) happening west of Abbotsford. Immediately east of Abbotsford the TransCanada highway becomes a wonderful, smooth multiple-lane freeway capable of supporting, you know, actual freeway traffic? You know, with like, bigs trucks and shit?

THE PROBLEM IS, IT DOESN'T GO ANYWHERE.

It goes to, what; Chilliwack? Does it go to Harrison Hot Springs? It does not. Does it go to the Cultus Lake Waterpark? It does not. It goes to Chiliwack.

NOBODY WANTS TO GO TO FUCKING CHILLIWACK.

NSFW. REALLY, REALLY NSWF.

NO REALLY, I MEAN IT.









THIS WORKS BEST IF YOU SCROLL INSTEAD OF PAGE, BY THE WAY.

STILL HERE?
FINE.
KEEP GOING AND YOU'RE GONNA SEE SOME GERIATRIC BEEF BAZOOKA.
IF THAT KIND OF THING OFFENDS YOU DON'T COME CRYING TO ME, ARGENTINA.
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

HERE COMES THE BEEF:










...HOO YEAH I GOT YER BEEF RIGHT HERE LADS OOPS I MEAN LAYDEES SORRY IT'S THE DRINK TALKIN


He appeared like a case of the flu ...
....completely without warning, smelling of vomit and Irish cheese, and just in time to ruin the weekend. "Here I brought you a gift, no need to thank me, it was cheap on sale up at the duty free, I shoplifted it anyway," he announced, tossing me a t-shirt.

...a gift from abroad to a broad

He staggered through the doorway dragging a tattered garbage bag. "Don't start crying or anything, I know you love it, you're welcome, now break out the speerits, make mine a double and none of your shite Jack Daniels, I want the good stuff, maybe that Wall Street or Publickers, yeah, it made the Superfunds list it must be good. Fry us a piece of stale bread and some watery potatoes too while yer up, the filth up at the border probed my manhole for three hours looking for Bin Laden, my arsegrapes are screaming, you know how that raises an appetite" he continued. "Godless darkies they were too, you know the kind, always jabberin and fingering up your private areas like, breed like rabbits too, try wearin a love glove ya filthy fuckers" trailed after him as he wandered through the house opening closets and looking inside the cupboards. "Don't go out of your way for me, I don't want to be a bother Ill just take your bed, don't bother changin the sheets i'll only piss'em up once I've passed out," he called, as he wandered out the back door, tripped over the dog, fell off the porch and landed facedown in the back yard.


Oh yay.





After I'd shoved his 'baggage' into the utility room I noticed my dog playing with something that had fallen from one of the bags:
...'it's for tunin' yer bagpipes' claimed knudson . 'that is providin yer a laydee an you have a set, no ha ha not bollocks that would be disgusting no I mean a twat'





The next morning he had disappeared, and all that gave evidence to his presence the night before was a dead spot in the lawn and the panicked bleating of the neighbors sheep. I was relaxing with a cup of coffee when a knock sounded at my front door.









"We've got a bit of a situation with your grandfather down at the park," he said. "Would you come with me?"









The officer handed me a picture that had been taken by a surveillance camera earlier that morning:

"Not even close. My grandfather had a smaller nose, for one thing," I said. 'Ew, by the way. "
"That's officer Fitzpatrick," he explained, "The other one's claiming he's your grandfather."
We arrived to find a crowd had gathered in the street outside the public toilets.
"One of our undercover officers is holding him. He's over there by the ladies room door," said the cop. "Please try to talk some sense into him."


...entrapment
Knudson was unhappy. " He took my hat and threw it in a tree! Plus he made me do dirty unnatural things with the biffy wand and he used me like a French hooer , just like King Henry II's soldiers done to my poor old father in the Crimean war, of course he loved it the filthy bugger, " explained Knudson.

After I made him give the officer back his wallet they returned his hat and released him to me. I took him home. He smelled even worse than he had when he'd arrived, and he got angry when I turned the hose on him in the back yard. I got a big laugh out of the way he skipped and yelped when I hit him with the 'jet' setting though. I'm sure that cornea will reattach on it's own.
Once he was clean(er) I sent him into the utility room and locked the door behind him.

Several hours later I heard what seemed to be singing coming from that direction. I knocked, got no response, and went in.

...'pretty and witty and wOOOOON-DERFULLLLLLLLLLL -Augh dammit woman can't a man enjoy the feel of a sensuous garment in peace? your couch is feckin ugly too, oh by the way lend me a chilled stick of margarine would you, the back door is squeakin if you catch my drift; of course bacon grease will do in a pinch, ha ha you see what I did there oh I'm a card I am.
Out of consideration for my guest's modesty I shut the door, went outside and beat the shit out of the neighbor's car with a pitching wedge. Just because.

I heard a tumultuous splashing coming from the bathroom around 11: pm, but I put my pillow over my head and ignored it, simply grateful he'd remembered he was in a first world nation with indoor plumbing.
The next morning I found this:
I knocked on his door. "I'm busy now, can ya come back in about five minutes no make that ten I'm a little dehydrated' he said.
"I just want to know why the toilet is full of rainbow trout," I said.
"You Yanks are all ignorant, that's how we keep em fresh back home," he replied."I found em down at the creek, I heard the truck drivers hang out under the bridge there so I went down to get a knobber, I mean I was having a wee nature walk, they were just laying there on the bank stoopid fish, I think they were asleep" I heard the bedroom window open and something small and bony hit the ground outside." Well I'm tired out think I'll take a nap now go away there's a dear" he said as he ran past the window, tugging his pants up.



45 minutes later he passed by again, running in the opposite direction, chasing a cop on a motorcycle.


I closed the curtains.

A few hours later my telephone rang.
""Whats the matter with ya gurl cant ye afford one of them cell thingies landlines are so yesterday, anyway I've found God, turns out he was down by the gift shop all this time, so I'll probably be staying out late praying and buggering children these Goddies get up to some mad capers, don't wait up."

Across from the gift shop?

I got in the car and drove downtown.

I found Knudson sitting in the doorway just off the alley. " What happened?" I asked." The lying bastards said there'd be snake handlin," He groused.





"Please put that away," I said.
" Find me a live rat first," he leered. I forced him into the trunk and drove back home.



I figured half the poor old bastards problem was a lack of dignity so I decided to make the effort and give him some, whether he deserved it or not.

The ungrateful old geezer lit it on fire and left it in the middle of the living room carpet.


Later on I was disgusted to find out he'd left me a present of his own:

..."it was the fish they must have exploded in the heat, yeah, that's it those trout are tricky buggers"

I was less than satisfied with his explanation.
"Oh now don't go getting your sanitary napkin all in a knot there's a love, Old Knudson will make it up to you I promise, you can't say I'm not a man of my word and that word is 'Bacon' or sometimes 'epiglottis' because it reminds me of a gurl I once had, boy she could take it like a convicted felon that one, reminded me of the Strangeways hunger strikes, no one of those brave lads ever wanted for a vanilla shake on my watch. In fact I'll do some tidying up around the place God knows it needs it, even though that's weemens work and beneath me dignity being as I have a dick and all but as long as I'm a guest in your filthy fascist nation I figure best to pretend to make a good impression, that way they won't let that Lynndie England at me not that I'd mind she looks a goer that one."




The next morning he'd left, gone without a word. But amazingly enough, and as promised, the house was immaculate! I was stunned! Minor household repairs had been performed, the floor vacuumed, the lawn mowed, the laundry done...I couldn't believe it!

As I was cleaning out his room I did find a disposable camera. Here's what came back from the printers (along with a notice refusing me any further service at that location)


















...I mean, yeah, it's my house...but that's not Knudson.

God hates me.

Mysterious Tartan Fiend Musical Have Play a Soft Container Hoses!

I AM here, really. We've had kind of a difficult houseguest recently and as soon as we get that sorted out I'll letcha know.

Purple Toad Sings Croon Of The Daguerrotype Photography!

Because I have a couple of other projects cooking-What,you thought I had no life? Ha! I say to you ha-fully, in your face very close patoo patoo!-and because I have been processing corn, tomatoes and bell peppers like a big ol' processing thing that processes stuff, I will simply post up some links. They are, for a change, very Safe For Work. So there.

cool nature pix, navigate
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2006/12/31/scorpion-mother-with-babies-on-her-back.html

cool weird buildings in america, not just barns...page around
http://www.ohiobarns.com/index.html

fullygeek website, explore
http://fullygeek.com/2007/07/windows-fatal-exception-tattoo/

cool pix!!
http://www.lostamerica.com/

vegetables on fire!
http://www.snapdragon.demon.co.uk/

The excuse...excellent
http://www.theexcuse.com/maxbooks/babyeatingman1.html

*******************
NOT ENOUGH????? Fine, then. Here are the words to 'Rock Lobster' by the B-52's:

We were at a party
His ear lobe fell in the deep
Someone reached in and grabbed it
It was a rock lobster

We were at the beach
Everybody had matching towels
Somebody went under a dock
And there they saw a rock
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock lobster

Motion in the ocean
His air hose broke
Lots of trouble
Lots of bubble
He was in a jam
Sittin a giant clam

Down, down

Underneath the waves
Mermaids wavin'
Wavin' to mermen
Wavin' sea fans
Sea horses sailin'
Dolphins wailin'

Red snappers snappin'
Clam shells clappin'
Muscles flexin'
Flippers flippin'

Down, down

Let rock!

Boy's in bikinis
Girls in surfboards
Everybody's rockin'
Everybody's fruggin'
Twistin' 'round the fire
Havin' fun
Bakin' potatoes
Bakin' in the sun

Put on your noseguard
Put on the Lifeguard
Pass the tanning butter

Here comes a stingray
There goes a manta-ray
In walked a jelly fish
There goes a dog-fish
Chased by a cat-fish
In flew a sea robin
Watch out for that piranha
There goes a narwhale
HERE COMES A BIKINI WHALE!

Day four: Home again, home again, jiggity jig

We had made a pact to only visit locally owned businesses on our vacation. Politically that's a lovely idea but restaurant-wise it's a crapshoot. The Biker and I are pretty discriminating when it comes to our groceries. Fortunately we have no qualms whatsoever about walking out of a place that doesn't send out the right vibe, and we'll follow the other's lead unquestioningly on the spur of the moment. So it was that we set out down the highway on the morning of day four with our psychic food radars tuned to righteous breakfast signals.
We ended up in Dryden in a tiny little roadside cafe, the only one open at that hour.

It was like destiny.

Breakfast is CRUCIAL. You can throw anything you want at a hungry person for dinner and generally they'll thank you. But fuck up breakfast, particularly in a rural area, and you'll be closing down real fast. You do not mess with sleepy, grumpy people who have to put in ten hours a day on a tractor or behind the wheel of a log truck.
This place was perfect. The staff was friendly and the food was AMAZING.
Take a Break Coffee. Trust me. Go there NOW. Get a passport if you have to. It's that good.


We took our time and hit the backroads. We found Lake Wenatchee, way up in the foothills in big hair country. Beautiful, cold, hard blue water surrounded by longleaf pine and soopalallie brush waiting to go up like a bomb with the next lightning strike. Beautifully maintained park. Late August and not a single overturned trash container, not one candy wrapper, nothing. Pristine. Colder than Ziggy's tit in a brass bra, too.

This is horse heaven. Hitching posts and iron rings are set into the curbs outside the businesses. Actual adult people ride horseback along the side of the highway, not just little girls. The locals really go all out on the whole 'ranch' thing, too, and there are some amazing spreads in between Dryden and Leavenworth that would look right at home on the set of 'The Rifleman'. And from all appearances, it's for real...raising trail ponies is big business here. So is recreational riding; from day riders on rented mounts to guided elk hunts a month long through the backcountry with a packhorse train.

Back on the other side of the Cascades, going down through the mist and the clouds, we thought we'd lost the town of Index. Now, I have a brain like a garage sale...you never know what you'll find when. The Biker has a mind like a steel trap. If we've both forgotten something then it's time to be concerned. We started joking about Cartmans anal probe, ha ha, but I caught him openly checking his watch a la Betty and Barney Hill. "Don't you DARE mention maple syrup"*, I warned.
Too late. I'd just mentioned it.
Things got quiet in the car.

We found Index.

We spent a little longer there than was entirely necessary.

There was a time when we seriously considered making retirement plans that included moving to the town of Index. Index itself is just an amazing, beautiful, secluded place. It's situated next to the Skykomish river, down a small road off the main highway and over a bridge. It is almost perfectly preserved, which is itself amazing given it stands in the middle of forest fire country. Still, most of the original wooden buildings still line the two main streets, including the old 'Red Man Hall', an old fraternal organization. There's not a plumb line left in the place, yet someone's bought it and they're fixing it up!

Despite the generally depressed economy of the region, there is a distinct absence of both trailer trash and opportunistic yuppie dorks in Index...just retirees and families and nice big dogs sleeping in the street.

A huge notorious biker bar used to operate out of the old mill building right next to the bridge. It had been closed down due to repeated 'problems' in it's recent past, and the last time we visited the skinny, crazy-haired woman who owned it was having a huge garage sale to clear out the last of the accumulated weird. She showed us around inside, sucking on a Jack rocks all the while, Camel cigarette bobbing in the side of her mouth while she talked up the property. It was almost tempting, too...aside from the small problem of the place regularly flooding up past the first storey every winter. Everything was original. Old mirrored bar back full of bullet holes, zinc topped bar with a brass rail, spittoons. The plank flooring was peppered full of gouges from loggers' caulk boots. The gas lighting fixtures were still in place in the cribs, which were still wallpapered with old newspapers scrawled with names. There was even a moose head wearing a baseball cap. This was one of those places where you cannot help but imagine what the ghosts talk about when no body's around.

Near Sultan we saw a sign advertising the Sky River Meadery
. We had to stop. A winery? Meh. But a meadery we'd never seen up until this point. The Biker had wonderful memories of the stuff...he'd been an SCA member back in the day**and they used to brew their own mead for their 'feastes'. He'd extolled it's virtues to me in such fashion that I was eager to give it a taste.
Damn! Excellent stuff!
He was a little disconcerted...the mead he was used to was made using honey from bees who'd been sipping from the blossoms of cannibis sativa x. "Matanooska Thunderfuck", and it had an altogether different kind of kick. Still, we bought two bottles.

AND NOW THE MOMENT YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! YAY!
PICTURES!
















...the amazing rock formations along the columbia river are a staggering sight to behold


















...pterodactyls native to the region have adapted well to man's presence



















...the presence of these large prehistoric fliers plays a crucial role in regulating local nuisance species which, if left uncontrolled, would run nuts chucking buses full of screaming japanese people into office buildings






















...a crew of firefighters joined us aboard the 'Lady of the Lake' cruise




















...we saw a scary fire that blazed up from between the hills






















...produce of all kinds was on sale everywhere in charming roadside stands. here a local farmer urges me to try his corn













_____________________________________
* movie reference, That Which May Not Be Named, i.e. 'Conflagration in the Lower Atmosphere'.

** now keep in mind, this was up in Alaska in the 70's, and Alaskans in general have some sad, backwards notions of what 'cool' consists of anyway...still. Picture a fineass cigar smoking bear, butch as fuck and high on coke, wearing full chain mail, beating the living snot out of someone using a broadsword, thigh deep in the snow, and yeah, I'll give that a 'cool' rating, what the hey.

Day three: the suburbs of Mordor

We spent all of day three in the Buick seeing new sights and revisiting older ones to see if we still liked them. We chomped on chips and drank cold Starbucks and watched the world go by.

The best thing about the whip is that you can forget about it. You have no sense of movement or distance as it glides noiselessly along the highway. It's like a house with a steering wheel. The only thing that would make it better is if it were a motorcycle, and I was on the motorcycle instead of sitting in an old persons car that looks like a police undercover vehicle, but life is harsh like that and we can't all be ballerinas either.

There's a winery or two (or more) in every little town in Eastern Washington lately, I swear. Some of these places are just spectacular, too. Huge gracious main buildings surrounded by vineyards and usually fronted by an ornamental garden, beautifully landscaped and designed. We enjoyed them from the road. I mean, we have t-shirts and we don't like wine. But maybe next time...some of them have NW-fusion cuisine and live music now. We'll just order beer.

Thanks to Google Earth I was able to do a flyover of possible routes and destinations and so discovered that our original plan to visit Grand Coulee Dam for the evening laser show was a really bad one. For one thing, the show sounds like it kind of sucks. When I first read 'laser show' I thought 'Cool! Like Laser Floyd back in the 70's! But no, it's the freakin' history of hydroelectricity in Eastern Washington followed by a patriotic salute, kind of like the one they do at Iron Mountain. And, NO.
Secondly, there is nothing at all between Wenatchee and Coulee City except BLEAK.

Now a little bleak is fine. Moderate bleak is even kind of a relief, especially if you've been traveling through crowded towns. But two solid hours of moonscape in 110 degree heat is just plain contraindicated. Still, we took the highway east up as far as the Alcoa dam. It turned out to be one of the best parts of the whole trip.

As you travel east the mountains get older. Recent sandstone blown into curving shapes atop recent basalt laid over recent sediment gives way to ancient walls of strange geometric columns called basalt needles. The forms run parallel, as though a rake had been dragged...mostly vertically, yet bent and swerving like eelgrass from the press of their own weight and the crush of gravity. Just the strangeness of it, the impression of enormous age and weight, the strange artificiality, the weirdly regular fallen sections lying like the broken columns of Roman temples, is enough to rivet your attention and make you fall silent. We turned off onto a rural access route that ran parallel to the highway, shut off the AC and opened the windows. The smell of the hot stone blew through the car.

As you keep going one vast wall of these formations rises and reveals another beneath, and eventually another again, with huge bands of soft tufa between them.
You can almost grasp the magnitude of one huge catastrophic event like this, some distant volcanic eruption spreading a vast, deep flood of white hot liquid stone for miles and miles across the surface of the earth. When you're confronted with layer after huge unimaginable layer of this stuff towering overhead, stuff that was once a flaming mass of molten rock 70 feet deep, the effect is enough to obliterate any sense of yourself that might remain.
You can see the age of the earth here. This is basalt so old that is has actually begun to crystallize...lying atop another layer even older than the first...and another.

Soft brown rock doves, feral pigeons and every kind of swallow and bat have carved small holes all across the bands of tufa and live there in colonies. Even along the most barren stretches they seem to thrive on the nearby highway traffic, working the eddies stirred up by the vehicles passing to catch the bugs and seeds that get thrown up. With the same effect, driven by temperature differences, happening all along the face of the canyon walls, these little animals seem to have a pretty good life.
The Columbia River runs along the base of these formations and here and there farmers have found enough room to grow orchards. The ground around the trees is full of foraging quail. The fliers play in the mist from the overhead irrigation and catch bugs, cleaning the trees.

Malaga is the location of an aluminum plant owned by the same corporation the Biker works for. The place is fucking enormous. They have their own hydroelectric dam across the Columbia river. We wanted to take pictures but there was a security camera mounted near the only turnout, and we didn't want to end up at Guantanamo Bay.*

The town of Malaga itself is largely composed of slum. That's the only way to put it. It's a trailer slum in the middle of the desert. In a way it reminded me of Tijuana...this squalid dump of a place, full of wrecked cars and blowing garbage, all roofed in corrugated tin and squatting in the dust, surrounded by hills crested with palaces.
What happened here? It's not location; theres no lack of jobs nearby; there's the river commerce, the highway, logging, agriculture, the huge bastard aluminum plant for heavens sake..? What makes one place out of a group of similar places the designated shithole?

So yeah, we'd been playing with the idea of maybe moving. We do this every year, and every time we get just a little more serious about it, but we both pretend that it's just idle curiosity. Malaga was kind of a reality check, though. It's the only place where we could afford to live. And sorry, but I've done slum already. Slum sucks.
Even though it's a slum in the middle of the most amazing countryside...


______________________________________________
*a couple of months ago that very thing happened where the biker works...hidden security cameras spotted a guy out trespassing on the reserve and taking pictures. this happens all the time; the place is on scenic coastline. hell, i've done it. they're usually pretty mellow about it. this time HOMELAND SECURITY suddenly appeared out of nowhere. the scary thing? turns out the guy really was a spy.
true fact. scary fact, too.

Day 2: Chelan

Our heart-stoppingly fabulous vacation tale continues:

We arrived bright and early the next morning to pick up our tickets for the Lake Chelan river cruise, billed as 'a relaxing and scenic inland voyage along one of Americas deepest natural freshwater lakes'. It lived up to it's advertising 100%.

Now there's a pro and a con side, though...Eastern Washington just doesn't have that varied a natural landscape. Outside of town what you get is sky, hills, rocks, dead grass and sagebrush. Go a little higher, add the occasional Ponderosa pine tree. Now add a really long lake to that and you have a perfect description of the larger part of the Lake Chelan cruise.

This is not a trip you'd ever want to subject a small antsy child to, since the boat only poops along at 15 mph, and the lake is 55 miles long. You spend about ten hours on board, round trip. Neither is this a trip you take expecting to have your shit blown away as you round every bend by dramatic natural beauty. That's Alaska. It's farther north. This is a cruise you take to meditate in the sunshine, to enjoy the restful motion of the rocking vessel, and to swill the booze you've smuggled aboard in pop containers.

Lake Chelan is genuinely beautiful, though. The water is pure and clear as blue glass. We did not see one piece of trash-not one! Anywhere! This is probably because most of the countryside surrounding it is absolutely barren of human presence. Not entirely so- there are a few huge, beautiful private estates, forested lakeside campgrounds, trailheads and two tiny towns around Lake Chelan which are only accessible by boat or air.

Stehekin is the small town at the very end of the lake. We spent 90 minutes there, and it was nice. Worth ten hours on a slow boat to see? Depends on whether you had planned to stay longer than 90 minutes, I think. There's several nice lodges, lots of places to camp out, fishing, hunting, horseback riding, pack mule excursions, all kinds of water sports, float planes and helicopter charters...it would be an amazing place to spend a honeymoon, for sure.

We had a drink and a sandwich in the main lodge, wandered around the town, saw the little museum, some pioneer cabins, a gallery and a gift shop...roamed around the lakeside, took pictures. Like I said, nice.

I guess a large part of the Stehekin allure is being cut off from civilization. There are no roads. Not even forest service tracks. All the waste is cargoed out and incinerated uplake. All the groceries and other supplies are cargoed in. Theres no electricity, landlines or cell service. A few cars, no gasoline. No internet. No police, no doctor. There's one satellite phone.
THAT'S IT.

See, the Biker grew up that way (his dad was stationed near the artic circle...they were completely cut off for three solid months every year, in the winter, in the snow, in the PITCH DARK, as a matter of routine) so the novelty value of isolation has kind of worn off, for him. It isn't his idea of a good time. Me, right about the time I'd finished the last page of the newspaper I'd start gnawing the bark off the trees and all crying and chucking hatchets, riding around full tilt boogie on a stolen jet ski wearing a bra on my head like a pirate hat. So no.

Because August is forest fire season, we sailed downlake with a crew of 60 backcountry firefighters who were dropped off halfway up the valley. Most of these guys were barely old enough to shave. I understand there's some decent money to be made chopping firebreaks, but once we got a look at what these poor bastards had to go up against...no way. I'd sooner finish my business major.

The fire had been started by a lightning strike. It began in the bottom of a remote valley completely encircled by steep,dry hills. When we passed it going uplake it was burning pretty well but still limited to the valley floor. What smoke there was, was white, which means moisture, and helicopters were overflying us regularly carrying huge dump buckets filled with water to pour on it.

When we came back it was a different story. A wind had been blowing steadily all day, and when evening came it suddenly became stronger. As we watched, the whole valley went up like an atomic bomb. A column of red flame, roiling with with black, rocketed straight up out of the center of the hills, taller than the peaks of the surrounding mountains. Everyone on the boat went silent. The smoke turned heavy and brown and boiled up all around it like a volcano. The wind carried it across the sun, which faded to a bright circle, and the smoke tinted light turned the whole lake bronze.
It was an awe inspiring, majestic, satanic thing to see, and I never want to see it again.*

As we drove back into Wenatchee we decided to grab some pizza. The first place we entered seemed not to be staffed, so after mooching around hello-ing towards the kitchen we shrugged and went elsewhere.

The place we settled on was some Pioneer-themed western pie barbecue type of place, with barbecue. As we entered the door, the first thing that greeted us was a huge, hand-carved wooden bas-relief depicting a severed pioneer head. It had wild blowing hippie hair, a full beard, and an extremely manic expression in its eyes.

So far, so good.

We had some average, edible food, which arrived frequently and in large portions. Why my Western barbecue sandwich was passed through a panini grill was never explained. An inexplicable baked object arrived mid-meal. I was suspicious. The Biker ate it. He said it was good, and tasted "like a puck-shaped baked bread of some sort."
Wagons, milk cans and old kerosene lanterns gathered dust on the faux shed-roof over our booth. In the waiting area two life-sized Pioneer rag dolls, an elderly man and woman, sat on a bench wearing authentic dead pioneer clothes, staring at the overpriced hot sauce on sale near the cash register. From where I sat I could see them whenever I glanced up and frankly this played with my brain.

We went back to the room and watched some Food Network for awhile. Then we hung around by the pool looking good, wandered up and down the parking lot (also looking good) and fed our leftovers to a feral cat that jumped out of a barbecue as we walked by it.

Thus concludes day two. Only two more days to go!
______________________________________________________




*the firefighters were fine. they never even saw the fire; the fire manager had declared it uncontrollable earlier that day and sent everyone out. so instead of risking their lives they all got a free camping trip on the lake, plus wages!

Day 1: mysterious native american parcels, anteeek overload and pterodactyls

I is back! All your good wishes carried through; we had a FANTASTIC TIME!


After carefully reviewing our plans it was decided that, instead of taking our new Victory on vacation, we would take the whip: a white Buick Park Avenue. Four doors, air, cruise, tunes, power everTHANG. This was to be a research mission as much as a getaway, and we needed to be prepared for unusual eventualities; which entails packing a lot of extra shit, like shoes and a map. (Next year we'll have the Victory in fighting trim. All we'll need are one saddlebag each, a t-pack and a credit card. Travelling light is an art.)

Our first stop, dictated by my bladder, was the Smoky Point wayside...the very same site of the mass geriatric potty misadventures I've written about before. Fortunately we arrived before the first of the Canadian casino charters and so the floor was dry, the seats were clean, and there were no alarming motorboat noises. Excellent!

When I came back to the whip the Biker was holding a round blue box. "It was on the ground in the middle of the parking lot," he explained. We looked inside and saw loops of woven cedar fibers. We placed it in the trunk, planning to put a notice in the local free paper.*

The weather was overcast and chilly as we climbed through the Western Cascades, through Monroe, where the Big House is, through small roadside towns with names like Gold Bar and and Sultan and Skykomish , where many of the former inmates now live. We've explored these towns in past years, and everything that was antique, historic or charming about them is slowly being lost to Section 8 housing, blackberries and meth-lab fires. Still, the major part of the passing scenery is spectacular. The forests and farms are lush and it's a beautiful ride.

We crossed Stevens Pass and ran full into summer as soon as we passed the ski lodge. I'm always surprised every year at how abruptly the countryside changes...up from valleys overgrown in logged-over maple and pine toward massive Doug firs broken by lightning, through false azalea and silky oatgrass to the final bare alpine summits. This time of the year they're black and bare with a few dirty patches of old snow on the very top... and then all of it gives way in the space of three steep downward miles to tan-barked Ponderosa pines and ryegrass and rusty-black basalt, dry dry heat and blue sky.

And unfortunate Bavarian-themed candy stores.

Even though I'm a little ashamed to admit it, we always stop 'n' shop in Leavenworth, 'A Little Bit of Bavaria in the Pacific Northwest'.
I really don't need to describe the tourist district, do I.
Suffice it to say that we hit town around noon, just in time for the daily 'Music in the Park' programme, featuring a man in lederhosen who played the accordion.
And yodelled.

The HORROR.

Thank God, as soon as you hit the city limits sign you enter the real Eastern Washington. The highway follows the river, and the valley floor is covered with orchards and gardens. The hills above this are tan velvet, perfect and soft from a distance. The arroyos which run down their sides are green and filled with clematis and sumac.

Peshastin is home to bizarre sandstone formations, Cappadocian-looking peaks that start up out of the hills suddenly and make a rather extraterrestrial backdrop to the tidy little downtown. This is a hardworking place...everyone is busy in the fruit warehouses or out in the orchards, and even the retirees are out bustling around making strange yard art and picking up trash off the roadside.

The town of Dryden is right next door. This place was pleasant enough that even the first tourists decided to linger, leaving Clovis points the size of the palm of your hand all along the riverfront. Both of these small towns are really nice places. People smile, dogs wag, and the little riverfront parks are pleasant and shady.

Cashmere parallels the river on the opposite side of the highway. Basically it's one meandering Main street, a long stretch of businesses in carefully preserved false-fronted brick buildings, and two residential streets. These run through the most adorable, neat-as-a-pin bungalow neighborhood you've ever seen, just spilling over with flowers and huge shady trees. It is also home to the largest indoor antique market we've ever been in. That's saying something. We maxed out and had to go visit a smaller one; there is actually such a thing as antique overload.

Monitor has a special place in my heart for two reasons: one, is the most gorgeous river-rock bungalow in the state of Washington, and two is the single-lane wooden bridge towards the outskirts of town, built over a wide irrigation channel. The goddamn thing is so ancient and so rattletrap that as you pass over it, even on a motorcycle, the decking flexes and creaks and you can see the spike heads jump up from the planking ahead of you.

Right as you summit the hill leading down into the town of Wenatchee you come upon the motel we've been staying in for years. All it lacks is a boomerang sign out front advertising 'COLOR TV!' ...otherwise it's pure 50's; neon-blue pool, cinderblock construction, flat angled roof, 'Magic Fingers' massage beds and all that jazz. The view from the rooms is an orchard and a horse paddock. The overweight friendly manager has an overweight friendly cat. Rockin!

We unpacked, got situated, then flew downtown and hit the streets ambling. We'd come 183 miles to amble. We were poised. We were ready. Our fu was unbeatable.

Old downtown Wenatchee has some prime ambling. Window shopping, cafe' sniffing, looking at the buildings and reading the old painted advertising, spotting architectural details, musing over oddball street sculpture, alley whomping and people watching. It's just a different world there. Half German, half Mexican, part NA and part Asian, small town and friendly, but scary hardcore after the sun goes down.

Just as evening fell we were crossing a street when we heard a loud, prolonged scream echoing off the buildings.
eeeEEEEEERRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWK!
Silence.
eeeEEEEEERRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWK!
Silence.

As far as I could figure, someone was smacking a pterodactyl with a bat.

All this ambling took energy and we soon needed Mexican food. We took our sweet time cruising up and down town, brains tuned to simpatico Mexican food wavelengths. I was beckoned by a little corner place called 'Taco Loco'. The biker was lured by 'Mi Abuelo'. We finally settled on Mi Abuelo. (I think he felt apprehensive about the whole 'Crazy Taco' concept.)
It was grubby.**That was expected.
The food was utterly, utterly fantastic. Fanfuckingtastic, even.
The service was awesome.
We were happy.

That evening I took two showers just because I could. I opened the bathroom window to let out the steam. While I was sitting on the side of the tub shaving my legs I heard another strange call echoing in the night:
'eeeeeaaARRRR ha ha ha!'
I looked outside into the darkness. I saw a horse. It saw me.

I worried about that. Pterodactyls probably eat horses.




____________________________
*when we returned we opened the box and pulled the contents out. It turned out to be a stack of dancers headdresses and a spool of raffia to repair them.



** this seems to be par for the course in downtown Wenatchee...unless the business in question has just been built, everything from the floor up to about five inches high is pretty much black. grocery stores, antique stores, real estate offices, it doesn't matter.

on vacation!

I'm going to take a vacation! Yay! See you in a few days, my darlings!

I will leave you with some helpful advice.
___________________________________


How many times have you been sitting at a party, enjoying the summer weather, sipping your daiquiri out of a coconut, when suddenly your entire evening was just shot all to heck by an inadvertant nad shot? This happens to me all the time. Now normally I welcome happy accidents like this, provided the model is reasonably attractive and is nobody I know.
The problem is, that's not what I get. No, what I get are inadvertent nad shots from people whose nads I do NOT want to see. Mainly family.
Mainly from the Biker's side.

I just attended a family reunion and the attire of the day was cargo shorts. These things:

Note the fit. Loose. Airy. Informal. Comfortable. To hell with underpants!
Now that's all well and good. I have nothing against cargo shorts. I own cargo shorts. Hell, I was wearing them on this particular occasion. But there's a big difference between a woman wearing cargo shorts in the summertime, and a man....That difference is that women don't get dangly nethers in hot weather.

note: model is a white european. however the same rule applies for all shorts-wearing races.

Everything is copacetic as long as 1. it's been a breezy day, and 2. the shorts-wearing male in question is standing up, and 3. on the same level as those surrounding him. But in my case the gods have not been so kind. Gentlemen, there is a reason your mother was always nagging you to sit nicely and wear your uns.

...sheep may safely graze. nothing to see here, folks, move along.



This is the reason:

...thunderbolts and lightning very very frightening me.

Let's say you have some dim inkling that when you sit like this things seem a little breezier than you'd generally expect. Fine. Just don't deceive yourself into thinking that crossing your legs takes care of this problem:

Same problem... only now the nads in question hang out even further and are a strange shade of vermilion.

NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THIS. Trust me.
Particularly close family members.*

_____________________________________
*does not apply south of the Mason-Dixon line or in the following starred counties in the state of Oregon:

UPDATED: Thomas Kinkaaaaaade the Painter of Liiiiiiiiiight

With a tip of the bicycle helmet to Sopwith Camel!*

Because I have no sense I am going to take on one of the 'big' questions and answer it definitively.

So then. What is art?

A creation by a human with something detectably human about it...evidence of the creators hand and thought that registers beyond the immediate sensory impression.
I don't make distinctions between high art and low art because that's deeply fucking repulsive. There isn't one. It all comes down to a question of 'does it communicate something beyond its apparent form?'
It really isn't any more complicated than this.

Now that we have that little issue cleared up, what about those so-called artists who give the whole effort a black eye? Whose work is so bad, so irresponsible, so contemptuously produced that it makes baby Jesus cry?
What is BAD art?

Let's ask a hamster!

guest deceased hamster Bluto Schmuggleware, recently gone to his reward via an overdose of amyl nitrate, yet STILL completely without odor. Call the pope!

"Mr. Schmuggleware, define 'bad art'.

A guy named Arthur with a police record.

"Your attempt at levity has not added anything to the intellectual tone of this inquiry. Bad art is...?

Listen, I mainly look at the ladies. You keep asking me to critique this shit and-

-wow.
OK. Now that's BAD.



___________________________________
Let's interrupt this for a moment and check on Baby Jesus:

...stone trippin.

Damn.
Ok. Now let's go on.
_____________________________________________


"...Philistine; that is the work of internationally renowned Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light! He creates some of the most sought-after images of our time!

Fine; I'm just saying that I've had bad gas in public restrooms with better wallpaper. That includes the graffiti.

"You cannot tell me that this next image does NOT stir the very depths of your rodent soul:

Isn't that that one scene in 'Mary Poppins' when they go through the chalk painting...?

"No! This is clearly an image of reverence and devotion.

It's that planet where the Care Bears come from...?

"It is a Garden of Prayer! You can tell by the magic cotton candy trees.
This next one might be a bit more accessible. Here:
Um....ok. It's the fabled Lost Temple of the WASPs...?
"No!
The 'Wee Kirk o' the Rill Tainted With Agricultural Runoff'?
"No no no! It's not even about a church! Everything about this scene evokes the solace of religion. Even the title was chosen to convey a sense of God's promise...'Sun(you see the play on words here?) rise Chapel'. As in 'The Son has risen!' Get it? Sun? Son? Risen? Morning? Two messages in one! A beautiful harmony of meaning beautifully and harmoniously joined together like twin ply toilet paper, the pink** scented kind with the wavy designs embossed in it.

_______________________________

People buy this stuff by the metric shitpile. Why?

1. It's pretty. Everyone likes pretty, right? It's not like, say, beautiful, because beautiful demands a little interaction. Pretty is just....nice.

2. Look at the palette. Remind anyone of a particular decade? That's right! It goes with old people's furniture! Pink, peach, grey and green...Mom and dad have all that disposable income now that the kids have flown, and what better way to display this newfound affluence than by purchasing a piece of art? One that already matches their decor?

3. The subject matter is easily recognizable. By God, a house looks like a house and a tree looks like a tree. Nothing at all like that modern stuff where you can't tell what the fuck its supposed to be of.

This guy's work is the visual equivalent of a prostitute smoking down her cigarette while she waits for her client to 'get finished'.
Is it art? Yup.
And the message is 'write the check, asshole'.

____________________________________


*And a 'thank you kindly' to Tickersoid, our man in Pontyhotpant, the word 'Sensory', and his amazing brain.

**I wonder if the artists preoccupation with the color pink might be evidence of a deeper level of symbolism? A subtle yet overarching acknowledgement of the female creative principle? Or maybe it hints at a primeval spirituality that can be apprehended only after ingesting certain hallucinogenic cacti and tripping on children's programming?
I think the answer is obvious.

Fickle Green Luna Moth: The Pupa Insane of Rage!

Remember when I asked y'all to help me figure out what to write? well, I aint forgotted. Here's whats left...

1. Art Rant
Nobody voted for this. That's why it's next! Someone suggest a subject. If not, you'll take what I throw at you and like it. So ha ha!

2. Mental Disorders Serve the State!
Unformed half-notions and poorly thought out arguements guaranteed! This one will go a long ways in convincing my daughter once and for all that I wear a tinfoil hat AND underpants.

3. My Lovely Garden...yeah, yeah yeah, same shit different day.

the following are from the suggestions corner......

4. Fluffy Kittens
Y'all are just SICK. There were two votes for this. Be careful what you wish for.

5. Why are Bin Men Lazy Cunts-Eddie Waring:
Now see, I'm sure this is something Eddie just tossed out there with no thought whatsoever, just to have something to contribute so he'd look all cool. Well, Eddie, I'm gonna front you up on this one. Now don't you wish you'd thought things through a little better? You could have chosen something meaningful or interesting but noooooooo, you had to be all flippant. And look where it got you.

6. Dugongs:
Now see? You could have asked for something cool, like dugongs, Eddie. Danator asked for dugongs. But nooooooooooo, Eddie was careless. Eddie was thoughtless. And now there's NO GOING BACK FOR EDDIE.

7. Old Knudson: This one will write itself. Can you dig it? Yes I can. (I know CB can. she's been waiting such a long time for Saturday.)

8. Gypsy moths, shitty ass caterpillars and arm rashes: any connection?
Claire asked for this one. Yes, it plumb eludes me too. Nevertheless, I will put my powerful powers of paranoia to work upon these seemingly unrelated items and laboriously hammer out a connection between them, which will in turn convince my daughter, the Stainless Steel Amazon, to have me involuntarily commited to that special exclusive spa where they administer the Xanax via enema. Yay enemas!

9. Ooo, and guess what? One might think I have exhausted the chancre full o' sepsis that is the Meadows clan, but that is not so!! No, my darlings, they is just like Jello...there's always room for more!
Although if the Meadows really were like Jello it would be that realy icky vanilla Jello that looks like the stuff that comes out of a zit, not nice good Jello that's clear and a pretty color because that's not the type I mean.

I am a fantastic grandmother.

My grandson, the Goonybird, and my girldog, Jett, are seated in the middle of the kitchen floor eating kibble off the carpet.
I checked...it's not one of the brands on the 'chinese melamine' list.
So it's ok.
Carry on.
______________________________
Whats more fun than a three-year old running around the house wearing a large pillow and cargo shorts? Handing same a giant tub of Kool-Wip and a spoon for breakfast, and watching him pick cheese fragments off the coffee table and drop them in. It's like a garnish. It is.
_______________________________

The Goonybird has walked into the kitchen and asked for an ice cube, and I gave him one. He put it down the back of his underpants and walked away.
I swear to God I never dropped this child.
___________________________

While we were outside picking blueberries I taught him how to hear the eagles calling down the valley. 'They're yelling and yelling!' he was delighted with this. 'Do they have breakfast?'
"I guess so. They have fish for breakfast' I replied.
He thought about it.
'No, they eat cowards,' he stated.
___________________

He removed his shorts and his underwear, and his sandals. The sandals have been replaced each on the wrong foot, and the underpants and shorts carefully turned around. 'Did you know those are going on backwards?" I asked him as he tugged them up over his butt.
Yes', he said. 'They're better this way."
______________________________________
He has taught the dog how to eat blueberries.
They are lying on the floor in the kitchen sideways eating blueberries.
Sideways.
off the carpet.
With their faces.
Lying sideways on the carpet eating blueberries, scooting themselves along after the rolly berries with their hind legs.
________________

Umber Whippet Is Vexed !

Finally we get to go on vacation! We are heading towards Eastern Washington late next week. This is the great thing about America...you drive a couple hundred miles or so in any direction and you're in a completely different environment.*

For the first ten years we were together we vacationed on the Peninsula, which is a kind of Tolkeinesque fantasy land. Morning fogs, huge trees, ferns like lace, hanging mosses and perfect lakes...but ten years was enough, and when we decided on a change, we changed big time.

Eastern Washington looks exactly like the setting for every Western movie you've ever seen, with rimrock, sagebrush, brown rolling hills and green valleys full of Ponderosa pine. This is more than likely because it IS the West. The REAL west.
OK fine, the Northwest. Still.

Many of the old boom towns are still inhabited, although those inhabitants might number 30 or less and the town be nothing more than a sign by the highway. You can drive through rangeland and see cowboys and their dogs herding animals using atv's and small helicopters, sometimes horses too. Fields of late snow high up on the hillsides get up and wander away when you crack the throttle, surprising you by being fifty or sixty sheep.
Granite cliffs and sudden basalt towers plunge out of the ground through the brown hilltops. Swifts and swallows stunt dive and circle in the updrafts they raise. Buzzards sun on fence posts with their dirty wings held half-open. They watch you with one freaky blue eyeball as you go past, hoping you'll crash.

Besides rangeland, there are unimaginably vast stretches of land out there where nothing but wheat grows, rolling out from you in all directions, filling the air with a smell like bread and grass. Wheat grows out of the crevices of the rocks. Stunted wheat grows by the side of the road as a weed. In wheat country night never gets black because the stars illuminate it with diamond dust from horizon to horizon. A falling star out here will make you completely step outside of yourself for a few moments, more dramatic than a hundred fireworks would be.

On a motorcycle travelling though wheat country you pass through invisible streams of temperature and smell. The cool of the shade on one side of a hill follows you a few seconds into the heat of the sun side, and you can smell the superheated blacktop just around the next bend before you drive into the shimmer coming off it. You know beforehand when you're approaching creeks and rivers, cattle and horses, towns, truckstops and gas stations. The background of it all is dust and a distant sweet hint of wellwater.

Some road cuts reveal banks filled with clam shells and scallops, snails and marl, a dry ocean bed that's landlocked now, uplifted past the pavement with a crown of windblown topsoil. If you stop to examine it, you hear nothing at first. Just the ticking of the exhaust pipes cooling. Heat rises in blooms from the pavement all around you. You can stand in the middle of the road and turn in a circle, put the bike on it's stand. No cars for miles. Not a dog barks. All you can hear is the wheat sliding past itself in waves as the hot air slips through it.

We usually stay in the town of Wenatchee on the Columbia river. Wenatchee is literally central to everything east of the mountains. It's a wonderful place. The town has preserved it's heritage and architecture, the public spaces are beautifully maintained. What I like best is that Wenatchee is filled with gardens and those gardens are filled with roses, every rose you can imagine, all enjoying the perfect climate. Every evening, when the sun goes behind the hills surrounding the town a wind begins, coaming like surf down from Mission Ridge, gathering dust and leaves up high, rising and rolling down the length of town, carrying the smell of all those roses with it. One night it caught us as we were riding. It was perfectly quiet. The warm wind came up from the ground behind us, rising against our backs and up past our faces, heavy with the smell of roses, and moved over us and past. We sat at the light at the top of town and watched it slowly lifting papers up past the windows of the office buildings on it's invisible crest as it rolled towards the river in the bottom of the valley.

In the evenings we cruise around from neighborhood to neighborhood and down the main drags which crisscross the town. Everywhere you go tiny quails break cover and zip around, all in a row, biggest to smallest. They look like little grey bowling pins gliding around on ball bearings, and each one has a little black flurp on top. They never seem to have a specific destination in mind, but it seems ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE for the whole family to dash out in front of speeding vehicles at random, at the last possible moment, to get there. I've have yet to see a dead one.

Downtown is full of vintage advertising signs, many of them pure boomerang Googie and at their best all lit up and grooving. Stopped at lights you can hear the sounds of dishes and glasses and feel the air conditioning from the open doors of restaurants. Motorcycle riders wave as they pass. In your lane they pull up alongside to see what you're riding and where you're from. Goofy kids wave at you from the rear windows of cars, and crack up laughing and hide when you wave back. Grinning dogs bark and wag from the backs of pickup trucks. Guys in cowboy hats driving trucks make traffic part around them when they stop to talk to their buddies passing by in the opposite lane of traffic.

When you cross off onto a residential street from the middle of town the sidewalks are shaded by trees. Men sit on their front steps and smoke cigars, women sweep their yards and water red geraniums in pots hung from the fences. Big dogs watch you from the end of chains and medium dogs run out to jump and bark. Kids stand in groups around their cars with the stereos up loud. Halfway down the block in someones front yard is a statue surrounded with silk flowers and votive candles. Everyones dinner smells like heaven.

Up another street everyone in the neighborhood is sitting in lawn chairs out on their driveways, watching kids play basketball in the street. Horses with riders walk along the sidewalks plucking overhanging fruit off the trees. Laughing groups of people sit on their porches, burning incense stuck in between the cracks in the stairs, passing joints and paper plates of fried chicken and potato salad. Teenagers bomb around stuffed eight into crew cab pickups. Retirees mow their lawns. Sprinklers pop up and rain. Neighbors sit on blankets near the sidewalk, shouting to their friends as they go by. Everyones' door is open. Coyotes come shadowing down the arroyos and sneak across the streets, acting suspicious, stalking cats. Chihuahuas yap at them from up on someones shoulder or out open windows turned blue from television light. Meanwhile the rich folk booze cruise up and down the river, laughing and smoking.

Commercial tree fruit is grown everywhere in the Wenatchee valley on whatever land hasn't been sold to developers, even within the city limits. When the fruit is ripening each grove gives up its aroma in rich currents that are amazing to ride through...apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, plums and more. The whole Wenatchee valley is rolling full of things growing and ripening in August. For me the tomatoes are the worst... beckoning you with indecent tomato promises and making your mouth water as you pass through the smell of them.

Most of all, underlying everything, you can smell sagebrush. It's almost a perfume yet almost unpleasant, something like lavender but also like burning paper, soft but pervasive. You can smell it in the dry cold air pulled through the air conditioning. You can smell it in the clothes hanging on the racks in the stores, faintly. You can smell the sagebrush over the hot coffee you're drinking in the morning.

Three days isn't going to be long enough. It never is every year.

____________________________________

*or maybe in the ocean or a lake or something, or at the dump, or maybe in a big mudhole. be careful.

UPDATED: Yellow Manta Ray Execution Day!

Go here
and read the post entitled 'She Shines'

This is my Podling, and he is a miracle.
___________________________________________

When I was a kid I rode my bicycle everywhere. This made me a target for the neighborhood bullies, because the bike I was forced to ride was a huge dorky clunker of a thing*, made even dorkier by the addition of apehangers, banana seat, and a sissy bar by my father. It was slow, it was fat, it looked like clownshoes and unfortunately, it was indestructible. I used to go over to the lot where the kids had build a dirt course and 'accidentally' leave it lying around. Pretty soon one of the boys would 'steal' it and start doing jumps with it and letting it go down the hills by itself and crash at the bottom. Not a scratch. Not a dent.
Rotten, unkillable bastard bike.

What the thing did, between having to make fast escapes from marauding kid gangs and simply trying to keep up, was give me legs like a draft animal. I had to work twice as hard as the spiderbike kids just to make the big, heavy sonofabitch move, and we lived in a hilly neighborhood. When I finally, finally got a normal bike (a white Schwinn Suburban 10 speed) I could make that thing FLY.
But here's the bike I really wanted, little design whore that I was:
pix from this site:http://www.lostamerica.com/
go here NOW.

...A Schwinn Stingray. And to this day I want this bike. Unfortunately, so does every collector out there, and they're being bought up and cut apart by the dozen to make these:



...Lowrider bikes. Something I also desperately need.
What can I say; once a design whore, always a design whore.

________________________________


I went to Seattle with the Stainless Steel Amazon a few weeks ago for a nice 'girls day out'...and it was nice. Seattle is still cool. It's still recognizable as the town I once lived in. Except for one significant absence: where did all the winos go?

I keep coming back to this at odd times ever since I got back. It really bothers me.

Back in the 80's, Seattle had a very visible, very large homeless population. You could see them on the hillsides beneath each highway ramp, underneath each bridge, inside and next to every abandoned building and tunnelled beneath every overgrowth of blackberries on every vacant lot. There were entire villages, with pathways. It was like a city within a city, a third-world one.
Not now.

Seattle has turned it's commercial downtown into an enclave of shiny, happy condominiums and cheery street art. There are nowhere near the number of abandoned properties that there once were, and very little land goes unused nowadays. That might have something to do with it...but how much? Seattle is a huge city. The police are finite. I wasn't spanged once, and as I've advanced into middle age I have become a bum magnet. Nobody. And I saw nobody..no schizos, no shopping cart people, no urban campers, no bums in doorways, nobody. It was strange.

I won't lie and say I miss them because I don't. I was a single woman with an infant (and no car or income) trying to navigate the streets back when Seattle was slap-full of predatory homeless. I was easy prey and made very keenly aware of this fact every minute I lived there. It didn't matter if I was on the sidewalk, riding public transportation or inside my 'secure' building-ha!-or not. I resented it like hell.

But nonetheless, a huge population of human beings has simply disappeared off the face of the earth, and whether or not I liked them I'm still weirded out by it. Really weirded out.
Can anybody answer this for me?

Anybody with something other to say than 'Soylent Green is peeeeeeepul" that is.

______________________________________________

*this bike:

...of course nowadays the stupid thing's worth beaucoup buckolas because it's a 'classic'. the picture doesn't really indicate the sheer mass of this monster, though...it was like a fucking parade float and it was made of solid pig iron. and you know what? i'd still have it crushed. bastard got me beat up more than once. quite a bit more than once, in fact. they wouldn't even let me park it near the cool bikes in the bike rack at school. *snif*