I left Newport, Oregon in the early morning hours and exited town without incident. The inland warm humid air was hitting the coastal surf, creating waves of fog in the air as large as those breaking on the coastal shore on my passenger side.
The temperature ranged from about 11C to 30 C on the trip down the coast so obviously the 'watcher' was trying to generate some heavy weather ... and in a couple of places it almost worked ... but luckily for me, I was able to motor on without delay or hazard .... for a while ... let me explain ....
I was approaching the the southern extremity of Oregon and the GPS directed me to take a right turn ... which I did of course and found myself on the wharf at Brookings Harbor ... that had me scratching my head .. I wrote it off to the GPS losing signal temporarily ... and as it was lunch ... and as I was right there at the Sporthaven Marina ... , I decided to have a quick repast.
The marina had a bar and grill ... so why not. I ordered a bowl of chowder and then I noticed to there were all kinds of banners around about the bar and grill being the winner of the 2009 Oregon Coast Professional Chowder Cook-Off .... well that's great but all that boasting .... oh shit ... boasting as in bragging .... it was Fort Bragg ... not Ukiah .... the knife was pointing at Fort Bragg ... it was Fort Bragg that I had to go to, not Ukiah ... I quickly downed the remainder of my Alaskan Brewing Amber .... purchased some smoked salmon ... and was on my way.
I was doing well until I came upon a small group of Elk and I knew immediately my cover was blown ... sure enough within minutes the blue sky disappeared under a blanket of fog.
I was stopped at the California border by the food and agriculture folks looking for fruits and veggies ... their job being to stop pests hitchhiking in on the fruit and veggies and then laying waste to the agricultural industry in California and therefore the economy ... if only they did the same thing with politicians ...
Now things get a bit weird and then they get scary ... I am driving underneath the vast cover of the California Redwoods and the GPS and digital radio is kicking out and in ... no problem ... the mantle of the redwood cover was blocking the satellite signals .... not an issue. Besides there was comfort here ... the information wasn't coming in was equivalent to what was not going out ... I was finally and truly out of the 'watchers' eye ... so I thought ...
Highway 101 in California splits at Highway 1 ... I took the Highway1 route to stay close to the coast ... we know why. The first 40k of that drive is through winding and narrow roads ... again under the cover of a dense evergreen cover .... the GPS and radio are kicking out and in ... it is dark and foggy ... dusk is approaching ... it is an isolated not well traveled piece of road at this time of day ... which is quickly turning to night.
At what seemed the darkest point of the drive, the GPS all of a sudden intones ... 'turn around' .... which is consistent with the GPS losing signal ... with one exception .... it was my mother's voice ....
Now I don't care how intrepid an individual you are ... when you know that 'something' is looking for you ... when that is weighing heavy on your mind ... when you are driving a solitary road unknown to you ... through fog and darkness ... and then your mother's voice says 'turnaround' ... can you avoid doing so ... because let's admit it ... that's what you want to do ... maybe, just, maybe ... that's what you need to do ...
The bottom line is that the road is too narrow to turn around ... too dangerous to even attempt such a move ...because the slopes on either side are simply too steep ... my decision was made for me ... I am not sure what I would have done had there been a turnaround possibility ...
As you exit the cross country run that is the beginning of Highway 1, you approach and enter a small hamlet ... just before McKerricher State Park Drive .... there is a sharp left ... remember by now ... it is also dark as well as foggy .... as I am approaching the left turn, the GPS intones, 'drive straight' ... in my father's voice ... a voice I have not heard since he died of a heart attack in 1971 ... I follow the instruction ... not that I always did ... I am simply in shock ...
At the last minute I see that there is a small, short road straight ahead that ends abruptly at the coast slope ... thus launching you into the surf hundreds of feet below ... I brake hard and swerve sharply to the left .. the road is wet and I lose traction ... I slide onto the shoulder ... traction is restored and I barely make the left turn ... but I do make it ... and now I know something for a certainty ... the 'watcher' has me through my GPS ... he has 'hacked it' for want of a better term and is now using it against me ....
I grabbed the GPS ... yanked the cord from the 12V socket .. rolled down the passenger side window and lofted the works in a long arc to the surf below ... I screamed at the top of my lungs , 'Surf's Up' ... I rolled into Fort Bragg not knowing what I was looking for and not knowing how to find it ...
I am holed up now in a small campground ... I have managed to grab an internet connection ... while writing this I finished a Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA ... I have just started a Red Tail Ale .... soon I will look for the reason I am here ... something tells me I will find an answer here ....
An uneventful day on the road but an interesting one off it ... let me explain.
I hugged the coast for reasons that we now understand and the weather was great ... there was low lying fog but no rain to speak of ... one other thing that Billy had said before I left last night was that, 'the lights were on, but nobody was home', in regard to some of my theories. After thinking about that all night I realized that he was talking about a lighthouse ... but the coast is dotted with lighthouses .... there may or may not be something here ...
I was able to avoid extended contact with transmission and wildlife until just below Tillamook when I could not avoid a number of pelicans.
Now pelicans are interesting in the sense that they can swim and that they have pouches under their bills ... this mean they can communicate with mammalian species underwater plus carry communiques in their pouches, but can also carry smaller species to and from various bodies of water.
Based on the flurry of activity I saw, I can only assume that I was seen and that that information was passed on .. so again the 'watcher' is roughly aware of my progress but is not aware of my exact position.
Now on to the more salient part of my day .... you remember Billy had mentioned 'Sharks' in Newport, Oregon. I made my way there just at twilight and I arrived at an opportune time ... the place was empty. I met the proprietor (who we will call Karen) and she seated me at the bar. I immediately stated that Billy had sent me ... she hesitated ... looked quickly to the left and right ... then realizing we were alone, simply said, 'cioppino', as she passed me a menu.
I initially didn't know what she had said but when I opened the menu, there on the top of the second page was something referred to as Shark's Cioppino .... ok, I was obviously supposed to order this so I did .... she then gave me a beer and said it was a Full Sail IPA .... alright what was the connection here ... Full Sail and cioppino .... and then I had it ... the first time I had had cioppino was in Santa Barbara and where I had it was at Brophy's .... and Brophy's had been recommended to me while on a harbor excursion .... yes .... under full sail.
So .... I now knew I had to travel to Santa Barbara .... half of this name conjuring up childhood memories of one of my favorite things .... Hanna Barbera ...
But that was not all ... there was one last clue ... it was suggested very strongly that I walk down the street to the Rogue Ales and buy a Cap'n Sig's Northwestern Ale ... which I of course did .. if Deadliest Catch is your type of TV you will be aware of Captain Sig Hansen and his vessel, the Northwestern ... the Captain is known for having the best safety record of the crab fleet ... what is the connection here ... and then of course I saw it ... I was going to have to return to the waters off Santa Barbara for some reason and I was going to have to find the boat/crew with the safest record ... but what the hell is out there and what am I after ...
There is one other thing ... just as I was leaving, Karen asked me if I had been up to the bridge as you leave town ... there is a great view from up there and the sunsets are great ... I got that immediately ... in Santa Barbera, I had to be out on the water at sunset and I had to be on the bridge of the boat ...
But it gets better ... at Rogue Ales just as I was leaving there, a waiter drops a container of salad dressing on the floor ... it explodes ... and yet he just walks away with it lying there .... I noticed that the spill looked like the continental USA and on the 'west coast' not too far from where I was; a knife was lying in what would be the Pacific pointing to a point on land .... I quickly noted that point and when I returned to the vehicle I immediately made reference to my Michelin maps and observed that the knife was pointing clearly at Ukiah, California ....
WTF .... and then I remembered that Ukiah was a Doobie Brothers song .... here's part of the lyrics to that song ... 'if they'd only slow down once, they might find something there' ... so there is something in Ukiah ... what can I do but play this out ... what choice do I have ....
To quote verse 101 from the Krome Koan,
'Legalize marijuana ... we'll need it with Palin as President'
The adventure is just beginning ...
Forever Man
PS - there is nobody in the Dooblie Brothers whose first name is Scooby ... there are a few band members who have smoked their surname ... more than once ... well, quite a few times ... well, frequently ... they are for Proposition 19 .... wait a minute .... is there something here ....
I am on the coast in Washington State tonight after a harrowing discovery and the necessity to seek a safe haven to gather my thoughts and to prepare for what will come next.
First a quick update on yesterday and then I'll get into what transpired today.
I caught the ferry to Sidney, BC from Anacortes, WA at 8:30 AM .... it was overcast and drizzling slightly ... a sign that the 'watcher' was displeased but not moved to do anything by my movement North to the island. After a quick stop at Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands, we continued on our way ....
It was no more than 10 minutes out then the ferry slowed and then made a slow arc to the west ... an announcement was made that whales had been sighted ... Orcas ... the ferry stayed there for about 5 minutes ... and then it dawned on me suddenly that there was more to this than met the eye ... and just like that I knew it ... just like I had suspected something subliminally in Yellowstone ... the creaturess were being used by the 'watcher' to track me ... no wonder they were always so close ... so curious ... so willing to approach me .... just like the Orcas yesterday ...
I knew now I was in real trouble ... which gave my visit to Victoria extra meaning ... for I was here to visit the 'medicine man'. Not in the North American Indian sense ... but in the literal sense ...to visit the 'man who takes medicine'.
He had last visited me on my birthday .... to warn me essentially of something dark on the horizon ... I was turning 60 ... one 6 ... there may be two more ... and if there were two more .... gates and doors would be opened that could never be closed.
His advice was simple, 'Never put yourself in the hands of shamans, learn and understand for yourself what path needs to be followed'.
After that we broke bread and gave thanks to the North American hop growers and I then left on foot to be alone at the top of the mountain ... that was when I made my post last night.
I left Victoria today on the ferry to Port Angeles, WA; having made a decision to stay very close to the coast ... staying close for the very reason that at the coast there is very little transmission and distribution networks, wildlife shun the coast because it is open, fish and other aquatic mammalian life cannot venture too close to shore; I could probably move south undetected ... and it worked for a while .... until the two bears crossed the road ... pausing to look back ... and the 'watcher' had me ... for a while ... 'it' knows roughly where I am .... 'it' doesn't know exactly ...
I looked up an old friend earlier today ..... Billy .... I was hungry and thirsty .. hadn't eaten and hadn't had anything to drink for nearly 2 hours ... Billy gave me a Big Al's Pale Ale .... it was that 'tea' colour that I like and it had a good hop nose and taste with a nice clean finish .... I would have named it 'more' .... when Billy clearly saw that this wasn't going to do it he gave me a Manny's Pale Ale ... a similar colour to the first one but hops and flavour wise, just couldn't cut it ... Billy also gave me a tray of deep fried fresh oysters .... 'shucks' they were good.
Then Billy flexed his intellectual mussel .... he reminded me that an oyster is both flesh and shell .... and sometimes an oyster and shell produce something else ... a pearl .... some pearls are wisdom ... and wisdom may be found at Shark's Seafood Bar & Steamer Company in Newport ... I asked him WTF he was talking about ... he clammed up ...
I still do not know any more about the mission I am on ... I know a bit more about how the watcher is tracking me ... I know nothing about why I must be stopped ... or at the very minimum delayed ... I do know that it is important that I keep moving ... if I stay dormant for too long 'his' sentinels will find me .... and I can only assume a close encounter with one will not be in the best interest of my continued good health ... it appears there's a clue in Newport ....
To quote from verse 727 of the Krome Koan,
'A man may as well open an oyster without a knife, as a lawyer's mouth without a fee.'
I have limited internet access tonight ... I will have to catch up tomorrow .... in Victoria, BC ... in a gutter catching a library signal ... they found me on the ferry ... much more tomorrow ... got to run ... nowhere to hide ...
In Anacortes, Washington tonight ... taking the ferry in the AM to Victoria, BC.
When I left Bozeman the skies were a brilliant blue but as the drive progressed to the westward, it gradually became overcast and finally started to rain about 90 minutes east of Seattle.
I drove through Redmond, the corporate headquarters of Microsoft ... shortly afterward my nose was running ... I must have picked up a virus.
It is becoming clear that the 'watcher' is concerned with my western movement as the weather is somehow being used to communicate displeasure ... it will be interesting to see what happens when I start the southern swing down the coast.
I listened to two great radio programs during the drive - both on Sirius Outlaw Country. The first one was hosted by Steve Earle ... one of my favorite songwriters. Steve is not just a great songwriter ... he is the inheritor of the Woody Guthrie tradition of 'fighting the power' - he is an anarchist and activist in the grandest tradition.
The other program was hosted by Jack Clement ... Jack worked for Sam Phillips at Sun Records .. is a great songwriter and produced albums by Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt. You can imagine the stories he has to tell and the music he is playing while telling those stories.
Mojo Nixon hosts a program as well ... he of Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper fame ... I had their Root Hog Or Die album for a while ... Q-107 was playing a cut off it quite regularly ... probably, 'She's Vibrator Dependant' ... or 'Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child' ... I think you get the picture.
Here's a little live in the studio madness at Sirius from Tom Jones et. al. ...
I think it is fair to say that while traditional AM/FM radio and newsprint are both in trouble financially, digital radio and on-line news is growing in popularity ... an appearance on Sirius digital radio is a national event ... as opposed to visiting every radio station in every city that your tour takes you through.
Also artists such as Bob Dylan, BB King, Tom Petty and others are hosting programs and playing music that we haven't heard for years .... if at all.
One other great feature is the 'station as genre' concept .... i.e., blues, country, Americana, jazz, bluegrass, swing ... a casual listener over a period of time can get a real musical education and be exposed to music that would take a large sum of money and time to acquire.
That said there is a down side ... and it is big ... local artists everywhere cannot get their songs played on the radio anymore ... local radio is gradually disappearing with the exception of college radio ... and even then to get played on college radio as a local musician you must have a local and loyal following big enough ... radio is becoming basically classic rock ... which, to tell you the truth, I can listen to at any time because I have it all on CD .... remember that format?
One other thing ... I would recommend you check out the Americana music chart once or twice a month ... to just see what is being put out by what artists that radio is not playing ... but is still great new music...
I have become a huge fan .... I guess that's obvious .... and would recommend you give it a test run ... which I think you can do for 2 weeks or so ...
To quote from verse 966 of the Krome Koan,
'Radio is the theatre of the mind; television is the theatre of the mindless'
Oh yeah ... another sign today .. check out this photo ...
See that number ... 53512 ... if you add the '3' and '2' ... you get '5' ... so now we have .... 5551 .... and if you add the '1' 3 times to each '5', you get .... are you ready .... '666' ..... it's only a matter of time folks ... it's coming for me .... stay tuned .... or should I say 'tinned' as in tin foil beenie ....
OK ... big boat ride in the AM ... if I make it, I'll let you know ....
A great fall day here in Montana ... 22C in Yellowstone .... which is in Wyoming ... where I was ... 30C in the lower elevations on the way back ... but it's a dry heat .... right.
While in the park I met a couple from Windsor, Ontario .. I started exchanging views about the Yellowstone experience ... I summarized it by saying they had taken the wild out of wilderness and it was like a drive-through zoo ... and then having said that .... I think that was the way I was feeling yesterday without being to articulate it properly.
I am not running down Yellowstone ... I will return and hopefully spend a week in here in a future fall of the year ... I am just saying this is not a true wilderness experience .... it's one that has been sanitized and bleached ... like flour and sugar ... but you know .... it's like pizza ... when it's good, it's great .... when it's not ... it's still good!
I am not sure the true wilderness experience I am thinking about still exists ... maybe Alaska ... maybe Mongolia .... maybe the Outback in Australia ... maybe at The Black Horse Pub in Peterborough ... I mean take a look at those folks on the home page ....
Gradually though, wilderness areas are being lost .... grab it while you can ... enough said.
On the way back from the park, I stopped in to the Montana Ale Works and noticed they had 4 IPAs on tap ... folks ... this is one of the last real world wilderness experiences you can have ... so I dove in.
I am not sure why, but in the NW states, they make some of my favourite IPAs ... big, monstrous beverages having a high alcohol content, yet tasting like a sophisticated barley wine, but bursting with Cascade Hop flavour and bitterness ... the 'hoppier' the better ... so here we go...
First up was a Bent Nail IPA ... it had a great 'tea' colour and a bitterness that I like in an IPA ... it was light and had a definite fruit flavour in there with the hops ... I really liked it ... A LOT!!!!
Next in line was a Blackfoot River IPA .... it had a colour that I would normally associate with a wheat beer ... leaning towards orange ... it had the IPA bitterness but yet was balanced with a floral nose and a citrus flavour ... 3 or 4 litres of this on a hot day would be welcome ... DELICIOUS!!!
Third to the bar .... Hopjuice Imperial IPA ... I think this brew is maybe made by other folks right now ... not as advertised in the link .. it was a sweeter brew ... meaning higher alcohol ... it had that darker tea colour ... not as hoppy as I would like ... I did enjoy it but it didn't hold up against the first two ...
Last ... and definitely not least ... Bitterroot Imperial IPA .... again an IPA that has a wheat beer look ... very orange in colour .. citrusy, fruity .... very good! It has a great bitterness on the palette but the finish is all fruit/citrus ... Belgium meets IPA ... my favourite of the four.
I am heading for the left coast tomorrow ... we'll see if the 'watcher' has something in store .... there was a sign today though .... literally ...
More later,
Forever Man
Speaking of birds and traveling to the left coast ...
I spent the day in Yellowstone .... the weather was overcast initially but as I traveled west and then south the weather cleared ... again reinforcing my thinking that eastern and southern travels do not bother whoever is watching .... it is moves to the west ....
The park itself was the first national park in the world and it's story and that of those to follow (in the US) was covered in Ken Burn's excellent documentary on the US National Park system.
The park was busy ... not as busy as July and August I am sure .... but never the less, busy. The geothermal activity in the park, combined with the wild life, make it a great visit for photographers of all qualifications. That said, you get the feeling you must stand in line for the photo op .... there's that much pressure in those particular areas.
I read a fascinating book by David Thompson in 1980 titled, 'In Search of the Shining Mountains', .... the author had a dream to live like a mountain man in the late 19th century, to experience it in a solitary fashion, to listen to the messages that nature was communicating, messages lost in the cacophony of today's existence. He set out to do that in the lower 48 ... but he soon discovered he could not ... barbed wire, rights of way, fencing, tourists in campers and Winnebago's, etc. ... either prevented him or were always there to 'poison' the experience ... he concluded that while we have preserved wilderness areas, we have lost something in the process, and what that is, is the ability to both truly get away and to experience the solitude and quiet, that is the solace that the 'nature' experience offers.
I experienced what Thompson was talking about today in Yellowstone .... it is a beautiful natural setting ... polluted by all of us with our constant engine noise and haste to take the quick snap and move on .... I even had someone lay on the horn behind me because they thought I had pulled out in front of them and slowed them down.
The best though was at Old Faithful ... there is an outdoor seating area that is probably 100 feet from the geyser site .... it is two rows deep and forms a semi-circle of about 25 degrees of arc that can easily accommodate about 1700 people ... and today that area was filled. So we all know when the geyser will erupt within a minute or two ... after all it is called Old Faithful ....
So ... we're all sitting there ... it's coming time ... folks are texting ... folks are talking on their cell phones ... folks are jokingly complaining that it is late ... sure it enough it erupts, pictures are taken ... everybody runs for the cars to get the jump to the next stop on the itinerary ... I really believe that nobody saw the eruption with their own eyes ... it was either behind a cell phone, an iPhone, a camera ... or they were texting and talking on their phones and missed it.
Thompson's book did not anticipate this but it did suggest that it might come to this ....
Now that said, we are indeed truly in deep gratitude to some visionary and forward looking people who set aside lands that form the National Park system.
To get a true sense of how grateful we should be it is worth while reading Wallace Stegner's great, great book on John Wesley Powell. The first part of the book is about Powell's expedition down the Colorado River - the second part of the book and most important in my opinion, is about Powell's struggle to bring common sense and science to the settlement of the American West ... and how he was undermined and over ruled by lobbyists and politicians and state interests so that the west could be settled without federal government interference and how years later this would lead directly to the dust bowl 'dirty thirties'.
The National Park system is not perfect ... the area around Old Faithful is too developed for me ... but without that system, there would be condos, casinos, strip joints and liquor stores around the geyser site ...
Thompson was right .... we have become a society that either enjoys everything vicariously ... reality TV, DVDs, Blu-Rays, internet ... or we rush out there with all our electronic toys, see it through these toys and then move on .... we get a facsimile of the experience ... not the experience itself.
I would suggest a read of Edward Abbey to get in touch with the sentiment I am talking about here ... start with, 'Desert Solitaire' ...
There were some folks in the park though that were getting the real experience ... the fly fishermen ... and yes ... fisherwomen ... there is something very elemental about standing in the stream, casting a line in sparkling water, catching and releasing a fish, and enjoying the sense of being out there, in one place, for more than just a fleeting moment. They have no cell phones, they are not texting, they are not rushing from place to place in a state of becoming ... they are truly in state of being.
