austin, tx

I’ve been carrying a sleeping bag on my pack, but I have no tent. In Oregon or Northern California, a sleeping bag without a tent didn’t do much good. Even in Utah and Colorado, I only slept outside without shelter twice, and both times I was miserable and cold and soaked with dew when I woke up. I’ve been super excited to get to the southwest, because the nights are hot and I could camp under the stars whenever I want.

You know, I could hitch on long roads during the day, enjoying the sun, and when I get tired, whether I’m in a town or not, I just walk a half mile off the road, lay out my bag, and get some sleep. Maybe even build a little fire if there’s proper materials at hand.

But the reality is a little different here in Texas.

First of all, there’s nothing enjoyable about the sun. It wants to kill me.

Second, sleeping in any sort of grass is problematic for the following reason: spiders snakes chiggers scorpions ticks fire ants and my personal fear, which according to locals is apparently irrational: coyotes.

Oh, and the mosquitoes are as big as dragon flies. When they land on your sun burnt skin and you slap them, they squirt blood like a stomped ketchup packet. I managed to cover most of my body with my hoodie, so the only area that was exposed was my neck, which is now covered in bites. They itch like bastards. For obvious reasons, a hitchhiker thumbing with one hand and digging his nails into his neck with the other doesn’t inspire confidence in potential good Samaritans.

The beat up pickup truck that took me over the New Mexico / Texas border was driven by a fat redneck who looked like Sam Kinison. He swerved to the side of the road, gave me a quick look, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the bed of the pickup. I chucked my bag in and crawled up after it. I hadn’t even sat down yet when he hit the gas. We were back up to seventy in a few seconds.

In the back his two children paid no attention to me. I sat on the wheel well and looked ahead at the endless straight road. The wind whipped my shaggy hair and I couldn’t help but be really, really happy. God knows I’m a sucker for cliches. There was the sun and the white puffy clouds and the wind and the long road getting eaten up and I was anonymous. Nobody cared where I was from or where I was going. I didn’t have to have the stupid “isn’t hitchhiking dangerous?” conversation for the millionth time.

“Where do you live?” Nowhere. “Ever get stuck places?” Yes. “Ever have really weird people give you rides?” Yes. “Ever have a scary experience with a ride?” Yes. Recently.

I pulled out my camera and let the kids take some pictures. The wind made it impossible to talk, but I didn’t want to. On the side of the road a sign read: “entering central time zone”.

Another one read: “Texas welcomes you – the Texas way!”.

Another one read: “Don’t Mess With Texas”.

Sound advice.

I love this shit.

Texas begs for some train hopping, but I’m a little hesitant. I’m clear on most of the protocol, legality, what to expect at the train yard, what kind of cars I’ll want. The only thing I’m having trouble with is the navigation. With a dozen trains sitting in a yard, how can I tell which one is going even remotely in the same direction as me, and which one is going to sit for three days? I need a mentor.

denver, co

I entered my couchsurf hosts apartment in Salt Lake City to find three drag queens in full makeup. They call it “face”. A tall one with stilletto boots threw a red feather boa at me and said “c’mon, couchsurfer, let’s go get some coffee.”

And we did. And it was fun. And you can now ask me about the drag scene in Salt Lake, of which I am amply educated. I can even recommend some good venues to meet girls with french tips and adam’s apples.

The next morning it took me all day to get out of Salt Lake proper. I was dropped in Roosevelt at about ten pm.

I was walking along the sidewalk in Roosevelt (and I really mean the sidewalk) when a car pulled over and rolled down the passenger window. Which was weird because I wasn’t hitching, I was just walking past their grocery store talking on my phone. From inside the car a friendly faced man in his sixties says “looking for a place to sleep tonight?”

Weird. Suspicious. I squint at him to indicate my scrutiny, “what did you have in mind?”

“Well, I gotta place right around the corner here. You can sleep in my backyard if ya want.” I didn’t have a place to sleep, and it was getting late for rides, so his offer sounds kinda good.

“Sounds good.” I hop in.

His house was a little like the house I grew up in, with a few differences. The Lord’s Prayer in needlepoint hung framed above a buzzing fish tank in the living room. There’s chickens and a garden and such in his backyard. We sat at an old dining room table and he made me a sandwich and told me about his life. He married at sixteen, and had five kids, and traveled his whole life. Mostly hitchhiking from town to town.

“Even with your wife and kids?”

“Always with my wife and kids.”

Weird. He set up an air mattress under a canvas in his backyard, and I rolled out my sleeping bag and crawled in. Just before he goes back inside for the night he says, “You’ll be comfortable out here. The wife and I get up at five, I hope you like egg gravy.”

At five thirty the next morning I’m back at the dining room table. Turns out I don’t like egg gravy. When I finish my food I see the word “Jesus” printed on the center my plate. Just in case you forget, a lot of stuff in this house says “Jesus”.

The next day I made it all the way to Denver. I’m really glad I visited Kyle and Elyse. I’ve been having a great time. In a few hours I’m heading to New Mexico.

reno, nv

I signed up for a couchsurfing.com account. It’s already netted me a couch to sleep on tomorrow night in Salt Lake City, which is super cool. I should have signed up ages ago. First thing tomorrow morning I walk to I-80 and stick my thumb out. Head east. I’m optimistic I can make a seven hour drive across Nevada in one day. One night in SLC and then to Denver.

I’ve been in Reno for two days, Jenna’s been a great host. She took me to a sprawling network of windowless casinos (including Circus Circus, which everyone knows is the Sixth Reich; ‘what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war’) She gave me two quarters to play the slots, and I doubled her money with one pull; which puts me 50 cents up on Reno. Bada Bing.

The way here was a little harrowing. I picked a direct route, but in retrospect a poor choice for my modus operandi. The rides were infrequent. The road I travelled averaged about two cars every fifteen minutes, and three hours in between actual rides. That wouldn’t have been so bad, because I had my pack and my headphones and long stretches of solitary highway to pretend I was Jack Kerouac or David Banner from the end sequence of The Incredible Hulk, but the weather – especially in the high desert – has wild mood swings. I walked along deserted hwy 31 in sun, rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, hail, sun, snow, and always throughout; wind. Lots of wind. I would have to say wind + hail is my least favorite combination. When I got to Reno my lips were dry, cracked pie crusts.

A couple quotes from my chauffeurs before I sign off:

“Ten minutes after I passed you, God told me to turn around, go back, and pick you up. He told me you were a good person.”
-Skinny man with a very bad toupee who lives in North California

“If I was in charge, I’d kill em all and put up a Ali Bubba and da forty thieves theme park! Drill the oil dry, export it to America, in and out like that! That’s how it worked when I was with the Seals! GIT-R-DONE!!”
-Diabetic trucker hauling lumber from Bend to Denver

“How old are you? 24? Isn’t it about time you started doing something real with your life?”
-Republican entrepreneur with homes in Alaska, Phoenix, and Bend

Heh, and my favorite:

“I always wanted to do what you’re doing, but I never had the balls.”

vancouver, bc

I had never been punched in the face before. It hurt. The prostitute gave me a sharp rabbit punch that connected with my left ear and glanced off my cheek. I didn’t see it coming.
To be fair, I had no business out on the street at that time of night, looking for a beer. It reminds me of that Pulp song: “nobody likes a tourist, especially one who thinks it’s all such a laugh.” I wasn’t laughing, but I shouldn’t have expected to walk through a hooker infested part of an unfamiliar town at night without incident. When one of them came over and muttered some drug fueled unintelligible sales pitch, there was really no right way to react. I walked away. She was fast. All the spastic energy of an advanced meth addiction allowed her to throw a hard punch and still be fifteen feet away by the time I had focused my eyes again.
“You motherfucker! You think you’re better than everyone else?”
Sometimes I do, but I also can be really neurotic. Honest. Fuck, that hurt. The worst part is the surprise of a stranger attacking you, the split-second nature of a brain jarring punch. I’ve never built up the ‘fight’ part of my flight-or-fight reflexes. There was a stunned, stupid ten seconds where I stood there, holding my ear, trying to reason out my response. Do I hit her back? Yell something? Of course not, those are horrible ideas. Do I just walk away then? I walked away, holding my ear.
Also a bad idea. A guy getting punched and just walking away from it on those streets is akin to swimming in shark water with open, bleeding wounds. Within fifteen seconds the first bottom feeder had caught up to me; a scabby, shortish guy. Also unintelligible.
“Motherfucker, you upset my girlfriend. You were rude to her. She’s a working girl. You think you’re better than her?”
Words. I’m more comfortable with words, more quick. I figure on the best way to diffuse him.
“I know what this is,” I say, “and I know you’re doing what you can out here, but I don’t have what you want.” I walk on.
By then another guy; tall, scabby, bald, angry; has blocked my path and joined in.
“I recognise this motherfucker. I asked him if he wanted rock and he said no! What kind of shit is that?”
That one didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to. This was turning into something exciting, something everyone wanted to check out. I saw two more guys crossing the street toward our group. It was a feeding frenzy. Or pecking party. Or whatever. At one point they had blocked me in against a wall, which made me choke on my own heart. The first guy had an agenda:
“You got yourself into a situation. It’s gonna cost you ten if you want to walk out of here.”
I stonewall him. I tell him I’d like to help him out, but I don’t have ten bucks. I fake a nonchalant laugh and say shit, man, I’m more broke than you. I don’t have ten bucks.
“Break out what you have then.”
“Listen man, I don’t have shit. I’m sorry about your girlfriend, but I don’t have a penny.” I gesture to my pockets then turn my palms upward to indicate that I don’t have thirty US dollars in my pants, which I do.
When he reached into his pocket, my flight response had almost reached critical mass. If it wasn’t for the sensible lesbian clogs I wear, I would’ve already made a break for the door to my twenty dollar Chinatown room on the other side of the block. He did it as a deliberate gesture to scare me, and it fucking worked. My fear was now showing, which was the worst thing possible.

It doesn’t have an exciting ending. When he reached into his pocket I started walking away, fast. He followed, muttering shit I couldn’t understand. I kept walking, fast. He fell behind and I imagined it was on purpose, because he was going to get me from behind. I didn’t look back. When I got to the door of the hotel I looked, but I couldn’t see him. I saw others from the group, but they had been distracted and were doing other things. They probably didn’t even remember me. Like goldfish.

more to come (portland, or)

So I’ve been a bit remiss, but since I named this the “travel blog”, and the last two months I’ve been stationary . . .

Best to make an rss feed and check in from time to time. Travel starts in March, and I’m thinking about hitching/trainhopping to Florida, so I’m sure to come across something worth writing about.

In the meantime: my first item for sale!

tucson, az

I hitch hiked to Tucson. This place is dangerous. There’s big cacti everywhere that will perforate you if you walk too close to them. It took me three days to get to this place from Pismo.
The way here was terrible. Most likely the worst hitch hiking experience I’ve ever had. It took me all of my first day just to get to Bakersfield, which would have been about a four hour drive if I wasn’t standing on an onramp in Fresno for six hours with my thumb out.
Bakersfield and Fresno are the two worst places in the United States. Period. Festering, open sores throbbing with white gangbanging K-Fed wannabes, all wrapped up in a blanket of exported smog from LA. They yelled and flipped me off and laughed as they sped by, because they percieved that they had finally spotted someone with a lower social standing than themselves. I ended up shelling out forty bucks that I couldn’t afford for a Motel 6 after my hands went too numb to hold my bag at two in the morning.
Thank god that I caught a ride out of that piss hole first thing in the morning, even if I had to ride with a chainsmoking old man with a swastika tattooed on his neck.
The second day was mostly a breeze, driving through the open Mojave with a shop teacher in a vintage Chevy, then two rich hipsters from San Fran on their way to Vegas in a rented Hummer H3.
I got as far as Needles and then it got dark and the rides stopped. I went to the Red Dog bar for dollar fifty Buds and got drunk with a guido from Long Island who had to move to the middle of nowhere, “Just until the heat cools off. You know – ‘The Business’”. The thick New York accent he had stuck out horribly in the bar full of rednecks, so did my blazer and shaggy haircut. He told me that I was a nice young man who showed a lot of respect, and offered his ample connections should I need anything on my travels. I told him “fuhgedaboudit”. We were pretty drunk.
So drunk that I decided my luck had changed and went back to Hwy 95 South to thumb a ride. It was a stupid thing to do, because no ride came and I ended up sleeping in an abandoned van I came across that reeked of gasoline. It was a very cold and uncomfortable night.
I got up at 5 a.m., stinking like gas, hung over, miserable and tired. Really, really, wretched. I stood with my thumb out for two hours next to a cemetary, and I cried for just a little bit. Eventually, a mexican trucker in a big rig pulled over for me. He was a very nice man. Thought I should stop travelling, get a job, have a baby. “Life goes by too fast” he said, “You live in the greatest country in the world, with more than enough opportunity to make a good life, but you squander it. In the eighties, when Converse were hot, I worked for seven solid days with no breaks to afford a pair. Seven hundred Pesos – my entire weeks pay.” He was driving a truckload of Christmas trees from Salem to San Antonio. Before he dropped me in Tucson he let me keep a small branch off one, because I told him the smell reminded me of home.
I think when I leave I’m going to find a trainyard, an empty box car, and ride the rails back instead.

shell beach, ca

Here’s an excerpt from the new play I’m writing. It’s called “This Afternoon In Dean’s Apartment.” It’s (entirely) based on real events:

___________________________________________________________

Curtain opens on the kitchen of a crummy Pismo Beach apartment. Dean enters stage left. Uptight Hysterical Roomate is in the kitchen making unidentified meat on her George Foreman Grill.

Uptight Hysterical Roomate (hysterical): “We need to talk”

Dean: “About what?”

UHR: “About you. You crossed a major line last night.”

D (incredulous): “I fell asleep on the couch. What’s wrong with that?”

UHR: “You came into my room last night at four in the morning.”

D: “What the hell are you talking about? Why would I want to go into your room? You had a bad dream.”

UHR (increasingly enraged): “No I didn’t. You tip-toed in at four in the morning, stubbed your toe, and went to my bathroom.”

D: “I have my own bathroom. I don’t remember any of this.”

UHR (shouting): “You must have been trashed. Again.”

D (defensive, smirking): “I only had three beers last night. Nobody blacks out on three beers. I have three beers before I shower in the morning.”

UHR (offensive, shaking): “I don’t care how many beers you had. You came in to my room and then went out and fell asleep on the couch again.”

D (losing interest in conversation): “I can honestly say that I have no memory of entering your room. Was I wearing clothes? Did I actually pee in your toilet? Why didn’t you throw something at my head?”

UHR: “What the fuck was I supposed to do? You were in my room, Dean.”

D (suppressing laughter): “I’m really sorry I violated your privacy, but isn’t this actually hilarious, and not something to get so worked up over?”

UHR: “I can’t help it. I’m uptight and hysterical and need to make your home life awkward for the last two months of our lease.”

Dean hangs his head as lights dim and curtain closes.

___________________________________________________________

I guess I took liberties with that last line. It’s a work in progress . . .