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August 31, 2002
saturday has rolled around, the
saturday has rolled around, the last few nights we went and saw the atomiks play at their camp, it was a welcome antidote to the overwhelming techno that abounds here. today we had homefries for breakfast, then started on the mixed drinks. this is one of the best years i've had out here, coming at the beginning of the week makes it so much better. we're coming back monday, they say that sunday night, after many folks have gone home, is a mellower and more fun evening. damn it's getting hot, yesterday there was crazy dust storms and rain, i ran into airielle's mom at a drum circle where no one could keep a beat. what fun all of this. hello to everyone, hope all is well.
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August 29, 2002
oh yeah this is my
oh yeah this is my first year ever not worrying about going back to classes, it's new and great.
Posted by bendan at 08:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
so it's morning time out
so it's morning time out here, we're listening to yo la tengo. andrew has lost his sandal, so he went back to sleep. last night they were projecting the film "faster pussycat kill kill" on a huge screen by our camp. so i watched that for a while. then drew and i rode bikes around, he was in the same rare form that he has maintained all week, throwing out damn good lines and doing this right wing preacher immitatation that almost had me peeing down my leg. today we're to finish constructing the air conditioned room, and my friend dan ruby gave me some coca tea he got in ecuador, it's in a tea bag and everything, so i'm gonna drink that early instead of the usual breakfast beers, which drain me and cause me to sleep the afternoon away, which isn't a bad thing, but i could hardly arise for dinner last night, and it was a well cooked meal. spent some time at pete stickerguy's camp last night, it's techno free, so tons of people with glow sticks walk in then walk out. we were heckling them. tonight the atomoks are playing there at that camp. pretty excited, with luck tons of non raver folks will arrive and rock out with everyone i'm gonna drag over there. the dust factor isn't as bad as last year, but still after 4 days my boogers are taking up more and more real estate in my nose like californians moving into northern nevada, or "eastern california" as i've just heard it called. hehe.
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August 27, 2002
hey everyone, out in the
hey everyone, out in the desert, already dirt as hell, i'm borrowing a pink
miniskirt for the week, man i bet u wish u could see that. we have a fridge
even, it's excellent, cold beer and shade during the day, and walking around all night, or riding in schoolbusses decorated like giant boats. i'm safe and good.
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August 25, 2002
heading out to burningman right
heading out to burningman right now, with luck i'll be able to post to this site, who knows though. gonna be out there 8 days i think, damn that's a long time. i have plenty of books and beer, should be solid.
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August 24, 2002
drew showed me this one,
drew showed me this one, it's the blog of a lady in chicago who works at an x-rated video store. it's a time sink, i've been reading it for 45 minutes.
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August 23, 2002
oh yeah steve wrote and
oh yeah steve wrote and he's doing very well in costa rica, very happy with his living situation, i can't wait to visit him.
Posted by bendan at 09:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
had a good hitch back
had a good hitch back to reno, a mother and her son in a uhaul truck, i sat on my backpack in between their seats, they were from utah, living in idaho but moving to montana and driving to monterey to get stuff out of storage, i had good conversations with them and i didn't have to wait more then 10 minutes for them to pick me up. now i'm gonna spend the next few days getting ready for burningman and moving all the rest of my stuff to storage, then i'm off to the desert.
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August 21, 2002
hey everyone, i'm in boise,
hey everyone, i'm in boise, airielle aaron and i went to mccall with some friends of hers, it was superfun swimming in the lake, riding boats around, cliffjumping, drunking (not a spelling error) and acting goofy. we're in boise at bob's now, gonna go see airielle's mom then hit some ladies night at some bars and our girls will slip us the cheap drinks, then some bike riding. boise's like reno terrain wise, but more trees and friendlier streets, seems like a good place to live when i move back to this country if it wasn't smaller then reno. oh yeah the hitch up was easy, two rides, the first from a crazy raver lady who spoke the whole time but made no sense, the second from some army lady who had tons of foster kids and drove us all the way from winnemucca to boise but at 60 mph, slow slow slow. i'll be back in reno the 24thish, then burningman, then p-land. keep in touch.
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August 17, 2002
read this read this read
read this read this read this. do it now, it's good.
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going to boise tomorrow, by
going to boise tomorrow, by way of the thumb on the side of the highway, it'll be damn good to get out of reno, almost two weeks is more then enough, aaron agrees.
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August 14, 2002
very cool article about a
very cool article about a team of MIT college students who used a card counting system to take vegas for millions, very interesting, read it.
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this recipe rules also, rules
this recipe rules also, rules like the fact that we're going to the black rock desert to go camping on thursday, and that the atomiks are playing in virginia city on saturday, and that mike stanger will be in boise for a good amount of time with us.
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August 10, 2002
in my absence my little
in my absence my little brother stepped up to the plate and became a damn fine vegan cook. he cooked these pancakes this morning, and i could have sworn i was gonna swoon for their light fluffy goodness.
we're going to berkeley today to see modest mouse, cake, de la soul and the flaming lips. aaron, bob and i are planning on doing some stealth camping, either sleeping in the wooded area above the university or else on top of some stripmall or shopping center. the only negative point of the trip is that we'll have to drive all the way into s.f. to get real good food, i know some excellent restaurants in berkeley but the ones in s.f. are better. being back is pretty good, i haven't seen everyone i want to yet but i'll get around to it, running into random folks i know is a mixed blessing but on the whole i dig it.
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August 07, 2002
been back 2 days now,
been back 2 days now, yesterday aaron get into town at 9 am and we went to see modest mouse in chico california at 2 pm, so i haven't seen many folks yet.
modest mouse was really good, they played the song we were hoping to hear, talking shit about a pretty sunset, so i was very happy. the drive back, however, is damn long, and it made me not want to go back there. the drive up was beautiful, but on the return we got kinda turned around changing from the 70 to the 20. it was ok, but we got in early this morning to the sight of the sun coming back up.
on being back in the lower 48: it's damn nice, that it's warm and i can wear shorts and not have to drag rain gear everywhere. i'm excited to listen to records i haven't heard in 2 months, and to eat mexican food that's actually good and to stay at the old katherine house, which is dirty a little and i'm cleaning it in between writing this. it's getting to be a normal feeling for me to come back and drop into annoying travelling storytelling mode, but some of the stuff that went down in alaska was pretty amusing. it feels like a good time to introduce ozzie, a guy we met in the last week.
ozzie
we got dropped off in wasilla on the 1st by this nice guy who really liked arm bands, he'd hurt his back backpacking and was gonna get back surgery in a month. wasilla is about 40 miles north of anchorage, and it seemed like a hillbilly paradise. imagine people pulled up at intersections on 4 wheelers and on 3 wheelers, which i had thought were illegal since they're so dangerous, but no, in alaska i guess you can't sell them but if you have one it's still ok to drive around and try and crush yourself with. it sorta reminded me of horses, cause they'd get the green light and zoom on into the gas station with their kids on the back of their motorized vehicle and the kid would wait outside while the adult rambled into the store to buy some more keystone ice 12 packs. anyways, we were walking through this town when this guy in a little truck with a campershell shouted at us. i walked over to his car cause we needed a ride, and he asked me, "wanna drive my car?" "why?" i asked him back, and he said "i'm too drunk to be driving right now." well, aaron and meredith loaded into the back of the campershell, and the guy, a native athabaskan indian named ozzie, stumbled out from behind the steering wheel and got into the passenger seat. he was fat and had a greasy mustache, and what i've come to call "alaskan teeth." i hopped in, and we shook hands. then he downed what was left of his beer, cracked open another one (miller high life was his brand), and offered me a cold one. i declined, and started to put the car into first, when he shouted, "wait, got some puppies in here, gonna throw them in the back, give your friends something to do." he started rooting around behind the driver's seat, and i saw at least 100 crushed beer cans hanging out back there. he found a tiny rotweiler/pitbull mix, and moved around to behind the truck, handing it to aaron and asking if any of them wanted a beer. they declined as well.
we took off, and ozzie started telling me about himself and his week. apparently his girlfriend had been thrown back into jail that very morning, after she failed a urinanalysis test that was part of her recent paroll agreement. they'd been drinking all of the prior evening, and she hadn't been expecting the test. sufficed to say, he was a bit angry, cause she'd only been out 4 days after being in for 4 months, and was looking at another 6 months. he had 2 teenage daughters with her, and he said he'd rather be in jail doing his girlfriend's time then have to deal with the daughters. he confided in me that he had a few other girlfriends around alaska though, but that his relationship with the jailbird was the most important because of their mutual offspring. i looked over at this drunken native and he smiled and said, "i don't know why the women love me but they do." i didn't know what to say.
we came to some road work, and ozzie continued with the stories, in between cursing the construction. he told me about how when he was young, he'd carry marijuana between tijuana and mexico, till he got arrested and fined 10,000 dollars. he was mad that he couldn't go back into mexico. when he asked where we were all from, and i told him that meredith was from canada, his first response was "i hate canada." i laughed, and he told me about how they wouldn't let him into that country either, because of a dui. he has booked hotel rooms in the yukon territory and everything, and they let his wife and daughters drive in, but they turned him around. this failed to deter him though, first he tried taking a boat into canada, but was stopped and sent back again, then he got a flight into canada, but they still wouldn't let him in, and threw him in jail cause there weren't any returning flights that night. he finished that story by telling me, "fuck canada. i hate that fucking place anyways."
during the drive to sheep creek, which was all the farther he could take us (all the farther is a neat thing the idahoans said, it sounds cool i think), ozzie probably downed about 5 beers. this was in the course of an hour, and it seemed to be his regular pace. he made me stop at some gas station so he could go buy a few more 12 packs. when we stopped he fished two more puppies out from behind the seat. they were cute and smelled like stale beer.
the natives have a corporation called CIRI in alaska that owns tons of tourist businesses and restaurants and things of that sort, and he gets checks from them every few months. he also builds houses, and showed me where he'd smashed his thumb with a hammer countless times, leaving it damned mangled.
like other folks who have picked me up hitchhiking, ozzie was a little lonely. he tried to convince us to come camp in his yard, and he's drive us farther north to talkeetna the next morning. we declined, so he decided to show us a camping spot on the banks of sheep creek. we all hopped out of the car and aaron asked for a beer. ozzie of course was all for this, and when aaron asked for my knife, ozzie instantly knew. "shotgun, eh?" he chuckled, then crushed a beercan and threw it in a firepit. he started telling us about fishing. one time him and some buddied were doing some illegal midnight net fishing, in which his buddy swam across a river and tied the net up. they waited till about 30 salmon were in the net, then dragged it in. he said that shortly after that they all pretty much passed out drunk, which was how they rangers found them, a bunch of drunken indians with 30 dead fishing and empty beer cans scattered all around. they got lucky and got a fine instead of jail time, since the rangers didn't want to deal with hauling them off to jail at 3 am. i think the rangers took some of the fish as well.
the other fishing story sounded unbelievable, but it probably wasn't. one time they had left lines in at the mouth where a river met a bay, or maybe it was another net, but they managed to hook a beluga whale. "what did you do?" i asked him. "we got the fuck out of there!" he replied. i just pictured a bunch of drunken indians running away from a beached whale, goddamn imagine that.
ozzie was good at pool, but too drunk to play, and although he boasted that he'd "beat my ass" i managed show him up. we sat around the creepy sheep creek lodge for a while, drinking beer and playing pool, till ozzie decided he was too drunk and had to get home to feed his puppies, which were still in the truck. he bid us about 5 farewells, then careened off in his automobile. we ended up getting invited back into the lodge by 2 brothers from chicago who were up for a week and were terrified of mosquitos and bears, but that's another story. maybe it's not good to say but i had a good time and was pleased to drink with a drunken indian.
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August 03, 2002
i promise i'll write about
i promise i'll write about my last few days cause they were great and included a drunken indian getting me and aaron pretty tipsy, some weird christian guy picking us up hitchhiking and being pretty cool for a weirdo, this two brothers who also picked us up hitching but were terrified of mosquitos, aaron scaring the shit out of me last night when we were camping in denali national park and he starting snoring like a bear sounds, us gettting tons of free food today at lynx creek pizza here in denali and singing happy birthday to an old couple of folks, and many good laughs.
the news is that i'm flying home early, i get back into reno the night of the 5th, aaron the morning of the 6th. alaska is great but all of our friends are flying out as well and we're ready to eat some good mexican food in reno and hang out. write me if you wanna, many of you i can't wait to see and hang out with.
oh yeah, we prolly get to do some airport sleeping, for aaron and i that's old hat from back in the madrid airport.
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