Quote of the day:

 This may represent new knowledge, but it is not useful.

 -Dr. Jacque Chateau on Jon Pedestrian's Exact Root Approximation Theory.
 

2:30 PM

 San Francisco

 (Pete's house)

 Getting caught up at Pete's house. (More on Pete later.) Going to rent a car this evening (Jon's Mazda died) and head down to Santa Barbara tonight for Solstice. Have much to pass along.

 Quote of the day:

 Fish got to swim

 Bird got to fly

 Man got to sit and wonder

 Why, why, why.

 -Kurt Vonnegut

 9:50 AM Friday, June 21, Summer Solstice

 Davis, California

 (The Ranch)

 Wasn't able to get anything accomplished yesterday, so today's a catch-up day, so no screwin' around, let's get right to it

Before we do I'd like to wish my wife, Kelly, a happy 9th anniversary! A big On the Road...Again, Tripping in Reverse salute!! I miss you and love you, Kel. Be home soon.

 Wednesday, The Day Before Yesterday Revisited:

 Just passed a couple of hitchhikers; talk about your study in contrasts. One guy, a kid, stood semi-sideways, with his crooked thumb above his head, pointing at himself as if to say: "Pick-up ME, pick-up ME!" The other was an older gentleman who stood in the more traditional fashion, feet spread, facing forward, but with his head staring down off to the side of the road, as if indifferent, to the passing cars, to his own fate.

 That's no way to get a ride, man. Jon and I used to have it down to a Zen art form. We made eye contact with everybody we solicited, who knows how many thousands. We were insistent but not pushy; we smiled, but not obnoxiously; when it became obvious that the automobile in question could not or would not accommodate us, we waved a that's-ok. (Actually got a ride in Texas from a rancher, he went down to the next exit on the interstate turned around and came back to pick us up because we had waved to him and not given him the finger--he even ended up taking us to a local diner and bought us lunch!) We accepted that most people were not in fact going to give us a ride; hey, comes with the territory; but that didn't mean that we couldn't, or needed to be embarrassed, to ask; if you're embarrassed or hesitant to ask for a ride, people are going to be embarrassed or hesitant to give you one. Gotta be karma-cool.

 Heading back to look for my wallet; it's got two-hundred bucks in it and my credit card; I think it fell out of the car when we stopped at the gate of the Farm so I could change into shorts. Possibility I left in a liquor store when I went in to buy a soda and a couple of bananas. The car is a pig-sty so tossing it has been difficult; still no wallet.

 Wallet's not at the gate, nor on the side of the road, just in case I left it on the roof and it fell off as we sped off. Back up to talk to Gerald; he's sitting on his steps waiting for us this time; we explain the situation and his first rejoinder is: "You're making a bunch of people really nervous." Jon mentioned that when we stopped earlier, Gerald seemed very leery at first. I asked Jon if he thought that that Gerald's paranoia might the refraction of guilt over what the Moonies stand for and how they go about grossly manipulating people. Jon says that he's not sure that they do grossly manipulate people and the conversation stops there.

 I don't know why, but I've got the ghosts of the Oklahoma City bombing and the Freeman Stand-off, and Waco, Texas floating around inside of my head. Ever since we lost our biggest, bestest enemy, the good ole Soviet Union, America has turned into a frighteningly paranoid place. Maybe what Vonnegut says in Cats Cradle is right, maybe people need the dynamic tension provided by demonizing a people to play the role of enemy so that they have a sense of purpose and can feel good about themselves. We've had a Rogues Gallery of enemies since the Soviet's took their ball and went home bigger than Dick Tracy’s and Batman's put together: Libya, Iraq, North Korea, Japan (economically at least) and now big bad China, and no doubt I've overlooked somebody.

 Anyway . . . we've got to bust it south to San Fran so that Jon isn't late for his featured performance at Sacred Grounds; I leave my name and Jon's voice-mail number with Gerald, a woman who works at the liquor store, and the sheriff, and consign myself to being broke and miserable for the rest of our trip, not necessarily in that order. Jon buys a six-pack and drinks 4 quick while speeding down 101 telling stories about being drunk and getting pulled over and some how walking (weaving?) away clean; inspiring! We make Sacred Grounds on time and Jon's set is fabulous, and fabulously well received, and the poetry is just fucking fantastic. If you're ever in SF, check-out open mike at Sacred Grounds, at Cole and Hayes, every Wednesday night at 7:30 PM.

 Heading back to Jon's place, to crash and reload, Jon decides to play a little joke. Charging up a steep hill back on the Farm a few hours previous, the Mazda did an unexplainable buck and cough; it did it again going up the last hill leading to the Golden Gate on our way to SF. Heading to Montclair after Sacred Grounds, Jon jokes: "I've never broken down on the Bay Bridge before, Mac." And he jabs the clutch in and out so the car bucks a couple of times. Ha ha ha. A scant 30 second later, on the last approach to the Bay Bridge, the car does it again. Jon turns to me and says, "That wasn't me, honest." And the car proves him right by going into a steady cough and wheeze, slows down and refuses to go another step just as we mount the bridge. Jon pulls it over to a little sliver of median triangle created by the very last on-ramp. We sit for a moment as the traffic on the bridge wizzes by us, both sharing, I'm sure, the very same thought: We're fucked!

 So we did what any normal, red-blooded American boys would have done in response to such seasonal serendipity: no, we were already on a road-trip, so we did the next best thing. We backed down the on-ramp and off the bridge.

 I leapt from the car and hopping over cement barricades as cars approached (all the while the theme from Mission Impossible blaring in my head); I made my way down the ramp and checked to see that the coast was clear for Jon to back down the ramp. (What would I have done if a car had come peeling onto the ramp with Jon moving backwards? At least I could have let Jon know that he was about to be killed!) We found a phone, called Pete and he said we could crash at his place, and well, here we are.

 So we regrouped at Pete's, made arrangements and rented a car (a passionate purple Mercury Tracer! check-it out in the ghost gallery). And with the day shot, we did the next best thing we could do: Jon's favorite stroke, the Bar Crawl! Met Pete and Chrissie for a beer at a place called Harvey's in San Fran, and then over to The Caribbean Zone for a couple of Mai Tais, then on to Jon's place to pick-up his cat Kramer, who we then took to the Ranch in Davis where Jon used to live/work when he was attending U Cal Davis, but not before one more pit-stop at the Warehouse in Port Costa (complete with a giant stuffed Polar Bear enclosed in glass) where we played some pool and talked to Roy the oh so gruffy-voiced bartender; and he shows us pictures of himself and a rather attractive (and drunk) woman playing strip pool, and then, finally, on to Davis and the Ranch. That's where I currently sit, the sprinklers spraying rainbows over the sun drenched fields. It's 11:20 AM.

 More regrouping in Davis; probably going to bust down to Santa Barbara this afternoon; solstice parade there tomorrow; San Diego is in our future plans; Mexico a pipe dream probably at this point; want to make sure that we leave enough time to travel the coast from Santa Barbara back up to San Fran.

 The only other time I've been through the Sacramento area was before Jon and I hooked up together in Santa Barbara. Jon put me on a plane to Colorado the summer after our freshman years in college--I did a Teacher's Practicum in Mountaineering with Outward Bound. We agreed that we'd hook-up later that summer in New Hampshire. When I got home I found out that Jon had moved to Arizona for the summer. That fall I hit the road with a friend, Mark. We cruised up into Canada, down into Michigan and bounced around into Colorado--where Mark was moving--in his Subaru Brat.

 I hitched out from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, through Utah and Nevada and into California; I slept in a culvert just outside of Sacramento off Interstate 80; I remember waking up in the middle of the night, a critter nibbling my head; guess he thought I was dead. The rest of that trip would take me through the Redwood Forests of Northern California, up the Oregon coast--where I picked up a traveling partner for a while--and up into Washington, Tacoma and Seattle; was going to keep it going back into Canada but I lost my momentum when I got blown-off by an old girlfriend in Seattle, so I headed south toward Santa Barbara, where I had received word that Jon had landed.

 Walked into downtown SF this morning from Pete's place up on the Castro, on a hill--what in SF isn't on a hill?--southeast of the city. Road the karmic wave pretty well; took one wrong turn into the mission; some woman started spouting off as soon as she saw me; she threatened to "Pop a cap in my ass" for walking through her neighborhood; I decided that it would be best if I cross the street away from trouble, but that only served to cause her gnash her teeth even more furiously and to increase her volume two-fold as now I was jaywalking in her neighborhood. Heart-pounding, rib-fluttering pulse put some juice into my stride, head held too high, skin too white, I caught the next wave outta her karmic zone as soon as I could.

 Catch sight of a couple walking arm in arm ahead of me; the one on the right has short hair and is obviously male; the one on the left has shortish hair and is obviously male, but wait . . . what's this? As I get closer I notice that the person on the left has her hair pulled back into a bun and is obviously a woman. Mucking about in the cerebral soup, I juxtapose the two scenarios and check my program for homophobia; I'm into love, I'm into sex, I don't care who it happens between or how, but I'm still dealing with the mainframe of my cultural matrix; not making excuses, just dealing as honestly--as I wander by the Lavender pages, past the poor city dogs squatting on street corners with their owners poised over them with their pooper bags daring any and all to question with seeking eyes, as cars carry the elite towards the future and a smog-induced safety, and the billboard sign wearing dudes proclaim that Babylon has fallen and that God has warned ye to get out of Dodge before the plagues that he has loosed fall upon ye with much wrath and righteous anger, and the oh so Aryan suited gents say, "Excuse me, sir, would you perhaps be interested in hearing more about the book of Mormon and YOUR personal savior Jesus Christ? Have a nice day"--as I can with what's I got; watching the way that males carry themselves in this town makes me realize how much of sexual identity is affectation, the way one walks, talks, gestures, holds his/her head, reveals a lot about who they are as sexual beings; seeing the way that other biological men carry themselves makes me realize how much of my own sexual orientation and identity is affected; you gots to be a little crazy to live in the city, but let's face it: all of us living in the modern world would be certifiable if we happened to live only a scant 100 yrs. ago.

6:35 PM, Thursday, June 20th: I found my fucking wallet wedged down beside Jon's seat. Cool!