I didn’t know how we got on the wrong road, or rather on the right road headed the wrong way. We didn’t know it yet anyway. We were making the best of a not-bad situation -- like everyone else on that stretch of road -- sitting and waiting for the one-way construction to be cleared. It seemed like a good excuse to open up our cooler for a ( Read more... )

We stopped at an alternating, one-way construction zone, dead stopped on a road with hard winds and dust devils rocking the car back and forth. Opening the windows to get fresh air… closing them after getting hit in the face with dirt. Snow in the distance, rocks and mud close by. It summed up Nevada in early spring ( Read more... )

Sure, I don't see "Ho-made" pies as a negative, but I would think that it wouldn't be a selling point in Southern Utah. Maybe it was run by one of those teen-incarceration places that take all the bad kids from California? Perhaps it was run by a sex worker rehab non-profit? Maybe the sign-maker was taking a little slap at the pastry chef? I ( Read more... )

It’s odd being totally in the middle of nowhere for a week. You come back and see lots of hoo-haw about things you haven’t even heard of. Things happen quickly: “#amazonfail”, Somali pirate hostage stand-off, secret Green Day show, right-wingers adopting “tea-bagging” as a slogan, The Giants seemingly having no hope.* You folks are all worked ( Read more... )

I had a great trip up to the Russian River. It was rainy and restful ( Read more... )

My favorite thing about Wisconsin is all the cheese crap everywhere. It’s like suddenly everyone can suddenly see what's going on in my head. Despite the disastrous “World’s Largest Cheese Box” that I visited a few years ago, I have forgiven the state of Wisconsin. I just refuse to drive miles out of my way for the attractions anymore ( Read more... )

Back from the Northwest. Tired. Got in at 4:45 AM and construction started on the burned out house next door at 8 AM. Ouch. Expect coherency another day ( Read more... )

I forgot to mention that I am away for the Western Worker-Coop Conference so don't expect much from me until mid-October. I'm sitting in dirtylibrarian's library right now exchanging conference e-mails and waiting to go to lunch in beautiful Bellevue.

I probably wouldn’t reminisce about my dead high school friend Rachael so much if her grave wasn’t in a cemetery on the road to the Russian River. I realized that with dairryiere moving in, obliviot and psoup in Pennsylvania, and Niki and Scott somewhere further north, there’s more death than life in Sonoma County for me. At least with my oldest friends. It seems ( Read more... )

Making observations on the people you see while driving across country is fraught with the danger of pretentious first-year-in-college prose. It feels so right and Kerouacian (or even Cometbusian. Actually, I don’t know why I wrote "even" since I like Aaron’s writing better than Jack’s) but that’s only because it’s usually so thread bare as ( Read more... )