January 30, 2010
One of the joys you forget about when you live in Alaska is that of the ‘road trip’. Living in just about any other state (except Hawaii), roads are endless, spreading out in the four directions, and beckoning the wandering spirit in all of us.
If you drive a full day from Seward you might make it out of the state. A full day’s drive from Portland lands you in San Francisco. In Missoula, Montana. In Reno. And even deep into Canada if you wish. I love road trips. Love seeing the highway out in front of me, the cooler packed within arms reach, the dog resting plaintively between the seats watching, and a Sam with mismatched socks splayed on the dashboard. We pack the gear in the rocketbox on the roof next to the bikes, leaving Abby’s bed, a tote of “campstuff”, our clothes and some food inside the Subaru and off we go. And then we drive.
We did a fair bit of exploring this summer and fall but we recently drove down I-5 to California for Christmas with my family, and then I did it again solo about two weeks later to help my mom celebrate her 65th birthday. Now, road trips with family and friends and lovers are great as it’s all about the destination, not so much the journey itself, whereas the solo car ride is a more introspective endeavor filled with old songs played at great volume with bad singing accompaniment, some steering wheel drumming, a bit more flaunting of the local speed limits (hello 95 through Ashland at midnight) and maybe a more generous splash of gin in my tumbler.
Driving the I-5 corridor is a 75mph experiment of staying awake and staying between the white lines, as cops don’t care about egregious violations of speed but they do care if you are swerving at 80. The drive to Sanfran is ten hours in a straight shot, or broken up, into two manageable days by yourself. I left Portland at five in the afternoon (nice rush hour planning), drove til midnight then found a deserted little road disappearing into the Trinity wilderness and slept for eight hours in the comfort of my empty car. I cruised through the Shasta wilderness area in a blizzard, me and drive by truckers keeping pace while Kia and Mazda shuffled along at 35. I flew through he Sacramento River delta bird refuge seeing hawks on posts, geese in V formation a hundred strong, a melting sunset, countless ducks and waterfowl, and even a few deer.
I listened to the football game. I turned back the clock to the Grateful Dead and did the Jerry jam for an hour or two. I listened to cartalk. Twice in the same day (different editions!). I made up stories for the people in the cars next to me. I put my feet up on the dash while setting the cruise control to 72. I ate a chicken club at Carl’s Jr. I got excited when the odometer clicked over to 34,000 miles. I drank baileys and coffee followed by a Guinness (in the same cup).
Basically, I had a good time by myself doing exactly what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it and how I wanted to do it. It was a small bit of pleasure that I had forgotten how much I enjoyed. Sometimes we get too caught up in stereotyping aloneness, equating being alone with being lonely, but a solo road trip is anything but lonely as you have your whole head to explore and talk to.

Stuporbowl
January 30,2010

Having listened to but not watched the last game of the playoffs while driving north from San Francisco, I had made a bet with my buddy George after watching the first quarter of the Viking-Saint game. I bet him that in his desire to be “the Man”, “the Hero”, and to have his gunslinger reputation put to rest permanently, Brett Favre would do something so insanely stupid that everyone from the casual fan to the most hardened critic (including Favre backers), would know that there isn’t room in the NFL anymore for egos as big as his. Not at quarterback anyway. He took my bet and today owes me a nice bottle of scotch.
He gave that game away. Gave it away because he needed to make a play that justified all his stupid plays in years past. He needed to complete that pass or make that first down at whatever the cost (hello, twelve men in the huddle with the game on the line???!!!) to his team. He is the consummate pro, don’t get me wrong, but when the game is on the line, he might not even be in the top ten quarterbacks I would choose to have under center in a big game.
I’m not bashing Favre but I hate what he stands for and what he is playing for now that he is out of Green Bay. He wants another ring to cement his status as the greatest ever. I can’t fault him for that, but holding teams hostage to deal with his inability to decide if he wants to play another season is insane. The Packers made the right call in letting him walk, and today are laughing all the way to the pro bowl as Aaron Rodgers has done a more than capable job of filling Brett’s shoes. What happens if no contending team wants him and only the Raiders, Bucs, and Seachickens want to sign him? Does he sign? HELL NO. Will he sign to be a backup? HELL NO.
Brett is as selfish as it gets, and in that respect he is a lot like a Major League baseball player, going to the highest bidder for their services for one year in the hopes that they have a career year and take that team to the promised land. Well, I can tell you right now, that Favre’s best year was the one he just had. Seven interceptions? Unheard of, and if he doesn’t get hurt the poor coach who has him has to play the guy just because he is a Hall of Famer.
If he was smart and willing to do the right thing, because even he knows he can’t have this kind of year again, he would tell Childress he is retiring as soon as possible so the Vikings can get on with their lives and start digging through the scrap heap of the NFL’s unwanted to find next year’s quarterback. Hey, Michael Vick, need a job?
But, because Favre is who he is, he’ll keep everyone waiting, hoping, watching, so that he can make his big announcement when the timing is right, and when the media need a story. Selfish. I’m truly sorry to all those Viking fans out there (Scotty, you listening? Riley, you too?) who have to put up with this.
And in a related story, Adrian Peterson, the greatest runner in the game today, contacts Lester ‘the molester” Hayes and wonders if he can borrow some stickum for next year.

Eight minutes
In my mother’s kitchen…
Lie the trappings of a single mom with two kids and not nearly enough time to utilize the kitchen as it was meant to be pre-divorce. She took the house while Glenn (dad) moved into a condo downtown with that tramp of a secretary. She used to cook. It used to be clean. She had a marble inlay for pastry, dough and biscuits, a Wolf range and an espresso machine. Now, she drinks instant coffee, the kids crack walnuts on the marble and the oven is a convenient storage place for more stuff she won’t have time to use. We help when we can but we think mom likes the controlled chaos that is her kitchen, spending as little time as possible in it while abusing the microwave for our meals. Our dogs get the floor, a cold hard tile able to break anything but plastic and perfect for licking. They nonchalantly perch just off the room waiting for the inevitable, knowing it’s only a matter of time before something falls, splashes or spills. Smart dogs.

Twelve minutes
The sound of the gate…
Echoed behind me as I left the garden. Its hinges barely hinged so it generally slapped easily against the chain link. It was a garden of rocks and weeds and junk and statues and driftwood, scrap metal and the random plastic animal living out the rest of its life peacefully in idle bliss. It had no order to it, no real life but served as a depository for his life, and the squeaky clang of the closing gate served as a timeless reminder that this area of his world was contained. Neatly within its boundaries, the gate kept most things from escaping and spreading down the sidewalk and into the street to overtake passersby and stalled cars. Because his garden was not growing anything, friends wondered why he called it that, but to him a garden was a metaphor for a peaceful place to just exist. There was a rickety metal chair he sat in under the seedless birdfeeder to smoke cigarettes (which he dumped in ever increasing abundance in Folgers cans littered around his chair) and think about empty spaces and the problem of hunger. His garden provided a respite from the dreariness of normalcy and as the gate sometimes swung open, that world, outside normal world would infiltrate his space and irritate him. His statues would sometimes appease him, all stoic and unflinching in even the direst of circumstances, but even they are starting to show the cracks of time and he wondered if anything was truly sacred.


Ten minutes
Things I’ll miss…
No matter how hard I try to anticipate the 90 mph fastball coming out of the mechanical pitching machine, I still can’t hit it. I see the ball fine as it goes down the ramp, into the clear chute, and onto the wheel and then WHAM---it’s by me and hitting the backstop. I foul off a few of them of course, but my appreciation for major leaguers (pitchers and hitters) has risen off the charts. Until you stand in against a known entity (the pitching machine) in a controlled environment (the batting cage) where you know when, where, and what kind of pitch is coming, and STILL can’t hit it, you have no idea how much talent it takes to be in the bigs. Imagine facing Tim Wakefield for six innings (knuckleballer), then flame throwing Carlos Zumaya of the Tigers who tops out at 101 mph, then CC Sabathia’s 88mph change up that snaps your wrists in two as you try to hold up. Then in the ninth, just try to put some wood on Mariano’s split fingered nastiness. Funny thing is, you might even get two of these guys in the same at bat! I’ll swing and miss at anything tossed to me if it’s thrown at a major league park, and I can stand in wearing spikes and an old school jersey.

Six minutes
The street that I live on
Is at the top of a long steep hill, surrounded by redwoods and madrones, we live in a cul de sac with two other neighbor families, six dogs, a fig tree, some cats, blackberry and raspberry rows, my two brothers and another family of five and one of four. Yes, it’s a busy cul de sac especially when my parents entertain. They like to throw parties at the house on top of the hill, mom will make endless hors d’oevres while constantly sipping her stoli martini while dad stands on the deck, meaty hand wrapped around a rocks glass full of gin, telling stories and poking the coals of the BBQ. Sometimes cars would be lined out the driveway forcing people exit in reverse order in which they came, leaving hangers on like mr. McGill fumbling for his keys, three sheets to the wind but driving home in the days before MADD was a presence.

Three minutes
On the day I was born
It was raining cats and dogs. The electricity had gone out on Oak Knoll, the wind was screaming and branches were strewn across our empty road. Of course my dad was in an airplane flying from Palm Springs to San Francisco. Of course he quit sucking on his unfiltered camels today. Of course the little Cessna he was flying caught on fire. Of course Fresno would have to do. Of course there were no rental cars but a long distance trucker making his last stop before heading north. Of course my dad made it.

Fifteen minutes
Everyone knew him as
A tinkerer, a fiddler, a noodler, someone unable to keep his hands, feet or mind still. It’s chaotic controlled energy that possesses him and it’s the closest thing to electricity I have ever seen. Even asleep, which is only rumored, his eyelids flutter, his muscles twitch, and nonsense drifts from his mouth in incomplete sentences. He has a dog that is unlike him in every way, a big lazy st. Bernard named Benson that gets tired just watching the man. Some days are spent in the garage among the dozen or so half finished projects…the lawnmower/pruner hybrid, the three wheeled bike with built in GPS, the table with six legs. Its all part of the plan, he says. The garage is his sanctuary, the place to come and drink Pabst from the self made kegerator and smoke Marlboros while letting the wonder of his mind loose on the future. Picking up a wrench, dragging on his cig, and knocking out a beat on an empty 55 gallon barrel, the sound echoes around the shop without direction. He stops and goes to the table saw, looks at it disapprovingly and moves on. This is how the day goes, moving from one thing to another with no purpose and a complete lack of intensity. He picks up a guitar nestled in the middle of a stack of tires, plugs in the amp at his feet and rips off a few Jimmy Page power chords, feeling the sound reverberate through his body. Benson watches impassively. The cigarette gets snubbed out in a BigGulp, hissing violently before becoming history.

Seven minutes
At the red light
She shook with almost uncontrollable fury. Tears fought each other to be the first down her cheeks but the swipe of an angry hand erased any notion that he would get the satisfaction of seeing her cry. It was an ugly two minute fight, a Mike Tyson affair with a left cross followed by the right hook. He was sleeping with her and she caught them in her bed, with her sheets, and her pillows. He was on top of her when he said “ wait babe I can explain.” She had finally let herself go, let herself fall in love with him only to be trampled on once again. She thought about moving to Baghdad where the only thing that could hurt her was sniper fire and bombs.

Eleven minutes
Behind the cash register…
She sat timelessly, as worn out and tired as most of the items in this store that progress passed by. The shop sat on the edge of a two lane road one up from main street, which was only main because at one point a town existed here. With the railroad gone and tourists asking only for gas and directions, the dust in her shop never moved and the spiders in the corners were the most fascinating thing happening. She ate her sunflower seeds on a stool, with her feet in boots kicked up on the counter, and an open magazine in her lap. Rusty the dog was often taken for dead as little as he moved so she would spray his coat with the empty seeds she chewed. The sun was warm and reflected the webs in the windows and lit the filmy cans of spam on the first shelf. She had nothing to but get old and was making her sweet time. John Russell strolled in needing another tin, as regular as clockwork, John needed a new can every third day, making his way into town in a beat up Chevy always needing gas and belching out the back like a drunk redneck. He smiled, paid, tipped his ball cap and left. Two minutes of excitement and she had about worn herself out.

Fourteen minutes
It was a dark and stormy night…
When they finally had their shit together enough to pull out of the boat harbor. The sky had dropped over the mountains and settled onto the small town, closing down the lights and pushing everybody inside. It was supposed to be a fishing charter but Charley the cook knew better. He had tied down coolers, stuffed refrigerators, locked and stored the foc’s’le in preparation for a bumpy ride the next few hours. On board were friends, and friends of friends, some paying and some freebies, and the mood was light despite the foulness raising outside. Captain had his glasses up on his forehead, never a good sign, and was peeling out of his rain gear when the first wave came over the bow showering the wheelhouse in saltwater. Looks like a long night, he muttered, staring into the endless darkness. The lights in the salon were on and cards were already being dealt amidst beer bottles and rocks glasses, laughter echoing around the cozy windowed room. Peaceful inside, raging out, swells rocked the old boat port to starboard as we crossed one of the many fjords leading from this channel. We were heading to the southwest corner, near where the fleet had been a month or so ago, hoping to pick up where they left off and drag some fresh fish aboard to take home. Late September is late almost everywhere to be fishing, but the forecast promised better things to come as this low was pushing fast and hard and expected to pass by morning.

Ten minutes
Drinking my tea…
Is a ritual. A ritual performed over two weeks twice a year, otherwise I drink coffee. Tea is reserved for when I am fasting, it becomes my meals, my home away from home, my comfort zone and I line up multiple boxes on the counter (up to six or seven varieties, all decaffeinated) and abuse the same mug over and over again. I’m not a tea drinker for a number of reasons, but I think the biggest is that it is false advertising. That vanilla ginger chai that smells divine? Tastes nothing like it smells. A weakly flavored hot water with that distinct leafy grass smell, but I drink it while fasting because plain water is boring, caffeine (ergo, coffee) is off limits, as is booze and soda. When my dad shunned coffee due to his blood pressure, he switched to having a cup of hot water with his toast and sports page in the morning. I’m preparing myself then for the inevitability of quitting coffee when I’m older and rueing the day already. Tea just doesn’t have the body, the strength, the robust character coffee has. Tea is like the ninth batter in an American league lineup, the weakest of hitters, but required because the rules say you have to have nine.

Eight minutes
The greyhound station in Provo…
Is strewn with the bodies of people looking for the exit. Out of Provo, out of Utah and away from the suffocating oppression of Mormonism. I had stalled here on my way to Colorado for a summer of hitchhiking around the west. Being dropped off after an all night push through the desert by a young Mormon rebel who had driven out of the state to buy dope and beer, I found myself on an early Sunday morning high as a cloud in the sky with a nice buzz tagging along for good measure. The next bus away from here wasn’t for another three hours and it was going to Cheyenne. I hadn’t thought about Wyoming, or anything else for that matter lately, but it seemed as good a place as any to check out. I bought my ticket from an old white guy behind a plate glass window with a speaker hole. I slid my money into the slot and received change and a stub that would permit me to leave.

seven minutes
In the morning...
We had been up all night in the celebration of a friend's wedding in Pokhara, western Nepal, and were down by the lake in the calm stillness of dawn. Light was barely coming into the sky as cows drifted aimlessly by, wandering nowhere. We smoked cigarettes in the silence. Her eyes were alive with the buzzing energy of a hive on fire. Walking up the dirt path, past the barber chair where I had gotten a shave less than 24 hours ago, past the deep cavern of a well, and onto a side street of pastry shops and bakeries, smells began to overwhelm and assault us. The sweet, the acrid, pungent, and stale all began to rise up from the sleeping village and I grabbed her hand, tossed the cigarette under my boot and stopped to face her, saying 'Can you SMELL that?'


twelve minutes
The feel of the rain...
Standing on the bow of our 200foot research vessel, we had been at sea for 50 days looking for a needle in a field of haystacks. It was early morning, before the heat of the day washed over the ocean, when a light spritz came over the bow, not sea spray but tiny droplets from the only cloud in the sky. We were less than a mile from an uninhabited atoll in the middle of the south Pacific, but this little land mass was actually causing a lone cloud to tear up and rain. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back to the light brush strokes of mist caressing my face. It was like a feather on my cheeks, sensual and ticklish, reassuring and comfortable. I couldn't get enough of it, like a drug, I wanted more, and then it stopped. As fast as it appeared it blew away and disintegrated. The cloud was gone, fully given of all of its moisture only to be carried by the prevailing westerlies. And now the boat came alive with activity, shaking my reverie like a child's rattle, before I knew it that fine mist had evaporated on my face and now all I had was a memory, but I still couldn't move. I was captured by the atoll, my own cloud now history and the onrushing thought that I'd be walking on the broken coral of a far out island in no time.
Being too deep to anchor, the captain launched a skiff to take us into the breakers and up onto the extended reef where we could wade ashore. The water was equator warm and upon making it to shore, I shuffled my feet in the detritus of age-old bleached white coral, hearing the rattling of calcium dentrified bones over the wind.


five minutes
Tomorrow I will...
Tomorrow I will open the door on a new town in a new world with a new attitude. I will look the day in the eye and tell it to stand aside as I have things to do and people to see. I will wear a clean shirt, brush my teeth, run a brush through my hair. I will have coffee, filling my cup with confidence as well as caffeine. I will stride down the street with purpose, shoulders back, spine straight and may even try to put a smile on my face. I will have hope. I will survive. I will join society in a productive way.
But that's tomorrow. and the day after tomorrow. and the week after the day after tomorrow.

January 18,2010

The four seasons of Portland are like no other I’ve experienced. I love the Alaska seasons of “winter” and “not winter”, but when you have distinct breaks in the calendar that correspond directly to a myriad of opportunities, jobs, and things to do, it’s tough to get excited about “fishing” season and “hunting” season.
It’s still winter here although the so-called ‘cold snap’ ended a few weeks ago and we sit comfortably in the mid 40’s to mid 50’s. I’m still raking dead leaves, now turned nearly to mulch as the wind has blown so hard that the fences around town act as wind stops. Leaves are a funny thing here, not something I paid much attention to at home because when the leaves fell they were, in good time, buried by old man winter. Then come spring, they were a muddy mess along with the rest of the state.
Portland has a leaf problem. I’ll say it right now. No one cares about the leaves, and their problems getting to where they need to go. It is a green city in more ways than one with the abundance of trees littering the streets and the proliferation of live local bumper stickers now in vogue. I am finding that yard maintenance is not just gardening and watching things grow, but also seeing things die (and hopefully come back) and become hardened to the coming season. It’s also about keeping it free from the falling cherries in the summer, the broken cottonwood branches in the fall, the empty walnut husks and the pesky critters (ya you, raccoons and jays and squirrels!) who are constantly out looking to cause trouble.
We planted strawberries, radishes, kale, spinach, lettuce, garlic, chives as well as decorative bulbs and a whole new native grass lawn. Sunflowers, bamboo, a curly willow, a huckleberry or two also went in. Can you see any life now? Of course not, as death has overtaken the garden, but with another edition of raking today, I did see some new green shoots coming out of the previously leaf covered ground.
The leaves though seem to come out of nowhere, as just when I thought the last ones had fallen, more suddenly appeared while we were away and I cursed the damn trees for shedding AGAIN. They make the roads slick for bicycle tires, they clog drains, they make unruly mulch piles, they de nude the trees, and now the amorous squirrels high in the cherry tree have no cover for their lovemaking.
Yard work and leaf raking is like a second job for most (my only job) and I wondered about Alaska’s leaf population and knew that no one in their right mind has time for raking in the fall. Then the snow flies and the point is moot anyway.
I have loved the seasons so far but it is hard to keep up even if you are unemployed. I have seen firsthand on a near daily basis the transformation of our favorite park a few blocks away from this vivid imaginarium of color to the sodden worn down brown it now wears. I still like walking there because it is different every day and sometimes Abby plays good ball and other times she is distracted and out of sorts so I end up playing toss and fetch by myself. Rain or shine, cold or warm, I am rarely the only one there and with today’s break between lows coming in from the coast, there were kids playing basketball, guys tossing a Frisbee, and dogs with happy owners galore.
Just another day in the park.