Chrome at Last

So I made it here safely. The trip seemed kind of long while it was happening, but really, was kind of a blur. I guess because it’s not really the most exciting reason I took a road trip.

Anyway, some of the stats from the trip:

Miles driven - 3,175
States driven in - 12
Hours driven - I lost track at one point, but I am going to say around 50
Cigarettes smoked - 0
Joints smoked - 5
Beverages with alcohol consumed - 0
Dead Pit Bulls seen - 1
Hours of television watched in hotels at night - 1 (Lost)
Calories eaten - Eight trillion
Calories burned - 40
Songs played on iPod - 444 (this seems low to me)

So yeah back here, and this has nothing to do with Massachusetts or me really, but...on Facebook you will read constant people telling you how much they DON’T like something. What is this? I like doing this to push buttons or whatever. Seriously though, how many more times can people tell you how “their old stuff is better”? This isn’t always true. Anyway, I don’t really feel like talking about that anymore.

Umm, yeah.

Day 6: September 11th

I feel like my hands are filthy even though I’ve washed them numerous times today. My whole being feels dirty and gross. I may have to shave or at least “clean up” a little tonight or tomorrow morning. I could have kept driving today I think. I am in Albany and drove a little over 400 miles today to Albany, NY which as you (should) know is about three hours away (I did it in two and a half once) from Boston. I didn’t feel like getting there at night and driving in the dark at this point, especially after driving all day in the sun, is a chore. I may be old though as well. Yesterday I did over 500 miles, so I am ready to be done with this trip. Ending with a brief drive tomorrow is a better idea as unloading all this stuff I have will be easier.

I don’t think I took any pictures today and yesterday only took about five or six. This part of the country is boring, I feel like I wrote that exact thing about “this part of the country” but maybe not. This is going to be a strange adjustment (I think). I never really settled out there so it’s almost like I was on a long vacation. That place (L.A.) doesn’t really have a culture I can put my finger on. It’s too big and is like a giant strip mall, or series of strip malls. There is nothing pleasant to the eye around the Valley/Hollywood, LA, etc aside from the mountains you are surrounded by. After a while though, those grow tired. The irony is that the film industry is big there, which is for the most part based on fiction. I feel like people out there are based on fiction. There is always some two part story to everyone and and everything. It grows tired after a few months. If the only thing keeping me out there was weather, that would be pretty horrible!

In the next couple of days I’ll probably do a more serious “recap” of this trip. I am frankly pretty exhausted at about 20 miles under 3,000 so far. Tomorrow will be the seventh day of driving. People went out and lived and worked and did their thing while I did this. Weird. Fun. Needed, etc. I feel relieved, revived, different, better, worse and healthier all at once.

Day 4: Green, Blue

Drove 623 miles today. I feel like I could have did way more but, and this is 100% true, I swear. This will be my...fourth or fifth time on Interstate 70 which runs from somewhere in Utah to Maryland. You pick it up outside of St Louis and take it up to Ohio. For pretty much the whole trip I was on Interstate 40, and then 44 which both follow Rt. 66. I am now off Rt 66 as that heads due north as I go north east. The first time I was on this highway was in 2006 when I first drove across country by myself, the second time was when I drove with Jodie when she moved back to OK last summer, I was then on the road a month later by myself when I moved out to Los Angeles. There is nothing significant about the road aside from for whatever reason I enjoy Indiana with it’s huge bright blue sky and bright green grass blankets everywhere you look.



That first time driving across country I remember seeing a sign for a Nike/sneaker outlet. For whatever reason at one point, and I guess to some extent now, I hate stopping and going to places I don’t REALLY need to be. What a boring way to be that is. A sneaker outlet in the middle of the country though, sounded like a good idea but I had no idea how far off the highway it would be, and the sign advertising it on the highway is yellow so it could be one of those places like the t-shirt stores you see in places like Hampton Beach, NH, Virginia Beach, VA, blah blah blah beach, BL, etc. The second time going by that place was with Jodie. We had broken up and I was taking the drive back to help her move. We barely spoke that whole trip so I didn’t want to ask to stop when we drove by it. I remember spying it from underneath my sunglasses while she drove. Last summer when I moved to Los Angeles I pulled off the highway late at night and got a room in what would turn out to be Effingham, IL. The next morning while leaving the hotel I noticed the sneaker outlet from the billboards on the highway the other two times. It was right there, and open for business. I bought one pair of Adidas that I wore out for a while but have since put into semi-retirement.

I decided on this trip back to Massachusetts I wanted to do a couple of things. I usually like to have at least one or two “big stops” for this drive, or at least did those other two by myself. First year it was the Grand Canyon, but I also did Niagra Falls sort of last minute on the way out that first day. I also took a tour of the Indianapolis Speedway, which I am half thinking about visiting tomorrow since I’ll be driving by it an hour and a half into tomorrow’s drive. The following trip, when I moved I wanted to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and any baseball games. I saw the museum which was decidedly underwhelming. I saw an Indians game, a Royals game and drove through Colorado and Utah so that trip was worth it. Went to Vegas the last night which was okay. By myself in Las Vegas, a non-smoker and a reluctant drinker was kind of boring and depressing to me. I can’t imagine ever going there again unless it was with...nobody I can’t imagine it ever being that fun to me. So I wanted to see that Meteor Crater in Arizona, and hit this sneaker outlet again. I had absolutely no idea where it was though. I was looking for it hundreds of miles before where it ended up being. I was going to try and push myself to Indianapolis which is about an hour and a half from where I am. I got this motel, and lets just say if I could get on the roof of this building I could throw a baseball at the sneaker outlet. I stopped here kind of knowing it would be closed. I then realized there was no real reason to push myself. I was going to try and break my record from last time when I did the 720 miles in one day. There’s no reason to though so I decided to stop here for the night, 50ish more miles than I drove yesterday and now pretty much 2/3 of the way done. Now tomorrow when I check out I can WALK over to the place before I leave. This may be more exciting than that stupid hole in the ground I saw in Arizona.



A good amount of dead animals I have seen. But man, creepiest one I saw was this morning. Just a pit bull dead on the highway, looked like it happened like twelve seconds before. Maybe he was sleeping there and just looked dead? No. The day before on one side of the highway was a police car pulled over, and then fifty yards or so another police car pulled over. In the middle of the highway, on the grass were two pit bulls kind of circling each other ready to fight. Was just a bizarre scene on the side of the highway like THE MICHAEL VICK STORY DIRECTED BY JEAN-LUC GODARD, CINEMATOGRAPHY BY SOME DUDE WHO DID AN R.E.M. VIDEO ONCE.



Rest of drive today was all kind of business. I can’t get myself concentrating if anything even remotely shitty happens, or anything I have to think about. I would rather think about things I came up with if that makes any sense. I only took a handful of pictures today. I am going to post more when I have more energy. I would rather work on writing down things than showing pictures right now. Also I am just lazy and don’t feel like going through them all so shoot me.



When I think of how full of shit they all are, trying to sell me on ideas and stories I wouldn’t believe if I wrote them myself. How far away can I run? How many times have I myself just shrugged everything off. For fifteen minutes I thought I needed something and then realized it was a fake pitch to me and I almost fell for it again. I should know the type now, those hairdos and footwear and inability to look you in the eye during key parts of sentences. Watch them yourself next time. They look past you at important “big” words. Watching these types on the internet. It’s like if the internet was the same as it is now, but in 1992. i see people I know in real life with this, as well as secretly looking at people I am not supposed to be looking at. They all want to sell something to someone. How gross is it? It makes me wish only like six-hundred people knew about the internet. It makes me wish I never got into it as much as I have.

Yeah okay then.

Day 62

Weird, I was wondering when I would get myself involved in a shitty mood on this trip, and hey here we are. Today was one of those ten hour driving days. I drove 568 miles. The original plan was to stay at my ex-girlfriend, and current good friend Jodie’s place in Oklahoma City. I was pretty excited to spend some time with the cat that I spent years with, in lots of older pics here...Raoul. I got here no problem, well aside from the endless drive...We went right out to eat at some cool taco place that was packed. Her boyfriend called and basically that was the end of us hanging out. Long story short here I am at a sketchy motel, in my second room. I felt like I could have kept driving another few hours after that happened; mainly because I was pissed I drove that whole distance only to get sidelined by foolishness and jealousy, etc. Whatever. Tomorrow I will keep driving and moving east, so who cares in the long run? I know we’ll still remain good friends long after this fool moves on anyway.


The drive today was long and seemed to never end, but I think the worst stretch may be done. I am trying to get in the space I was in the first two days before this shit happened tonight as it was making it easier to move ahead. I don’t want any kind of distractions by people I don’t know. Or from people I know.

Otherwise, the trip has been great. Yesterday was kind of a good and bad day. Good as I got to see that giant Meteor Crater outside of Flagstaff. It was truly huge and to think that something that big hit the earth is pretty intense. Why do I feel like I wrote that somewhere else? The rest of the drive involved an hour and half traffic jam that was a result of some rocks falling in the road. I spent a good chunk of the traffic on the phone with G to the point that when I got to the part of the traffic jam where I drove by the AWESOME PILE OF ROCKS THAT FELL IN THE ROAD I did not take any pictures of it like I should have! After all that time in a traffic jam in which we talked about how intense it would have been if when you got to the “Ground Zero” of the traffic jam there were just hundreds of dead horses or coyotes in the road that all ran in the road at once.

Anyway, no energy to write or deal with pictures or be funny right now. Should sleep, so that's what we'll do.

Day 2: In Brief

Have a ton to write about, but since yesterday was a big time suck and I only drove 343 miles, I have to make up for it today. I am in Albuquerque, and need to make it to Oklahoma City later. If you look at that on a map it's far. I thought it was closer! Anyway, yeah. I'll do an update most likely tomorrow.

Also, people out in this area of the country are weird.

Day 1: With My Back to the Sunset

03/30/10 - Flagstaff, AZ


Today was the first day of the rest of my, no, today was the first day of this road trip back to Massachusetts. I left at 1:40 PM, got to Flagstaff at exactly 9:00, missing 24 which was apparently on at 8:00 PM! I drove 487 miles total which isn’t really much. Wait, is it? It felt like it went by pretty fast. I filled the car to the fucking brim. I had more stuff than I thought, and of course my book and cd collection is sitting in storage there to be shipped back at some point. I literally had a garbage bag filled to the point of ripping with sneakers and shoes. I bought two new pair of sneakers in Boston last week. Took them on an airplane back to California, never wore them, and now am driving them back to Boston where there i

(I actually fell asleep while typing last night and have no idea what was to come in that sentence!)



So here I am early morning in Flagstaff. I slept about three hours last night. Per usual, I had a shitty bed...mixed with lifting all of these heavy boxes, etc yesterday did me in I guess. I also can't breathe here at all...the elevation here gets to you if you are just passing through. Thank christ I don't smoke, last time I was through here was a nightmare.

So this place, I hate driving at night in areas I am not familiar with. The last couple of hours of the drive were through the mountains in the dark and aside from the bright as shit moon as the sign post ahead it was kind of shitty. I got to that point of seeing little things running across the road from driving all day into the night. This room I found was reasonably priced and it’s on Rt 66 which hopefully today I will be a little more leisurely on. Must be noted that if you are driving on Rt 40 in this area you are going parallel with Rt 66 so if you get off the highway to stay somewhere you are most likely staying on Rt 66 and you can surely find souvenirs anywhere. This is my third time on this road now, or rather on a road that runs next to Rt 66. The charm has not worn off, at least when you drive by some of the old school neon signs.

One bonus on the trip was a stretch of Rt 40 runs north/south instead of east/west so I had the sunset to my left for a good amount of time. The rest of the trip my back will be to the sunset which is kind of depressing in more ways than one.

I found the downtown/old town area of Flagstaff last night and had a brief dinner in some pizza place. There is a little snow on the ground here and frankly yesterday wasn’t really tourist day. The brief encounters I have had with other people have all proved slightly odd aside from the girl at the counter here when I checked in. Guy at the pizza place had this weird “yeah whatever” shoulder shrugging attitude that was one of many reasons I didn’t like Los Angeles. I stopped into a gas station to get gas and coffee before coming back to the room and an Asian woman was in there going on about aspirin or something nonsensical. The guy at counter, after she leaves is like “I have no idea what she was saying” I racistly said “yeah, you never know what THOSE PEOPLE are saying do you?”. No I didn’t really say that, but I thought it just now. He continues...”this guy came in the other day asking if I spoke some language of some country right next to Germany...and I was like ‘sorry I don’t’ and he got mad at ME”. This story seemed like it was going to get even less exciting so I just excused myself and was out.



Hit the Continental breakfast this morning which is basically a scam invented by muslims to trick white America into yeah I don’t know where I am going with this. This may have been one of the worst ones I have ever been to in my life though. It was literally three loaves of white bread, some cereal and not orange juice but orange DRINK. LIke they have at McDonalds! I of course had some toast, but really?

Leaving California and further away from her is growing more difficult as hours go by it seems. Spending hours a day by myself in the car listening to music and looking at nature is great and all, but at the end of the day I am going to dwell on shit for too long and get myself into a place I don’t need to be in.

Over the Hills

Granada Hills, CA - 3/27/10

Last weekend in LA. Tonight doing a get together with the few people I know out here and will probably end up leaving Monday morning, but maybe tomorrow. The main problem on my mind at this point though...what song will be the first song played on what should be kind of an epic journey? I feel kind of unprepared for this trip, which is kind of good. Once I start over thinking these things they get to be a pain in the ass. I know the numbers of the highways I have to go on, and I am driving east, that's all I really need to know.

Sabbra Cadabbra

dream I had one night about eight years ago:

For some reason I like the low energy feeling a xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx feels each day. this is the best way to get yourself dug into the deepest hole you can get yourself dug into. this is the best way to just avoid having to deal with the voices that invade me every night around 2AM. if I could fall asleep before they start talking to me it would be great. having mere music on when you go to sleep is not only soothing, but it blocks out these voices more than anything. I try and keep myself awake until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. I try to fall asleep standing up each night. I try to get myself back into shape, and it doesn’t work. I’m scarred for life with memories I guess. disgusting fucked up memories that nobody would even want to see in a movie. disgusting haunting images of people and events that have no value except to haunt me. why does this happen to me? I can’t sleep at night for fear I may dream about shitty memories and images. I can’t sleep at night because it’s fucking boring. I drift and drift but I try to pull myself away, as sleeping is going to hinder my following day. sleep is not going to help me out. sleep is not going to do anything for me that I notice. I like feeling like shit every day. I enjoy feeling like I’m going to nod off at 2pm. I like the fact that everyone else is safely in bed, and me and the few others around the world are plotting. I don’t like that I have to explain things to anyone. I will never feel comfortable with that. I won’t ever rely on lies to explain myself like everyone I know seems to do. I won’t make things up like “I care” or “I’ll call you later”. I know you’re not going to call, don’t tell me you are. I don’t need closure. I don’t ever need closure. I have lot’s of open books. I have books I started 5 years ago that I just sort of lost interest in. I have closure issues with people at the end of the night. I can’t stand to have to shake hands and hug and exchange promises of phone calls and e-mails. just go on your way, I’ll go on mine, perhaps we’ll meet again someday on the avenue. (don’t touch that dial!). I wonder what goes through the heads of others around me sometimes. I try as hard as possible to never let anyone know what I’m thinking. I try to not try at all to not let anyone know what I’m thinking at any time. when I want to, I read the introduction to a small class, but most days I want to let people do their own studying. not that there are any people out there that really, really care. I just don’t feel up to anything right now in line with normal everyday actions. I’m trying to talk to more people when I go out. not try to meet them and hang out with them, but talking more to others helps things out. sitting here spouting that I don’t care what people think, and how I hate everyone is stupid in general. I don’t hate anyone, especially people I don’t know. I do have some sort of maturity as far as I know. I just don’t ever meet the right people. I can’t imagine meeting people at a gig, or a bar hanging out. it’s loud, you can’t talk, and it’s a general rule that if you’re talking to a stranger at a bar or club, you most likely have a rock hard cock in your pants, or a soaking wet pussy in your pants. I’m not going to start discussing why I think Hour of the Wolf by Bergman is a scarier movie than anything you and your sweater has ever watched. I’m going to discuss how fucking big my dick is, I’m going to discuss how I am sensitive to the rights of animals, and how I have a sister who I am very close with, or that my cock once fucked some chick for 7 ½ hours straight. that’s not the conversation I want to have, nor do I ever want to have. I want to just talk about something. did you know that you can get an okay mandolin for about 200 bucks? do you even know what the fuck a mandolin is? speaking of mandolins...

Otherwise though, things are going pretty good out here. The weather has been pretty good this week for the most part. I haven't really been upset about a single thing in weeks. I feel this renewed energy I haven't felt in a long time. Looking forward to this trip back to Boston next week for a week, and then the drive across country the week after that. I love road trips and the fun times they bring to your soul. If I didn't have this whole thing planned out I would probably
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I Am Not the Owl
Pt 1 of 6:

When I finally would get around to falling asleep I would see them. A lot of times I would fall asleep on the roof with my head slumped over like a boring husband in front of a TV set. Dreams would show up of the conspiracy and everything I suspected happening. When I would awake in the morning I would reset the machine I carried with me and check it over before finishing the day out. Somedays the machine would have information inside of it that was useless to me but I would look it over anyway. I still have this machine and it works like a charm. Sometimes it does things it is not supposed to do.

My friends all said I was crazy, paranoid. I had too much time on my hands so of course I would invent these stories. I saw these “stories” being written in front of my eyes though! The machine I carried with me everywhere I went, it proved all of this. I could never show anyone this machine though. It was mine and nobody would know how to even read it or tell what the information I was looking at a meant. I had enough information collected now that I could present it to everyone but again, like last time, I didn’t want to look crazy so I held on to it. I always hold on. This kind of information. I will write it down on paper. I will type it out. I will think it out in my head. I will sit there and not move on a chair for hours and meditate on this information. Why I collect it to drive myself insane I have no idea but I do and will continue to do so until I confront them.

We had a party. Man, everyone was there that night. People I knew from high school, college, old jobs around town, ex-girlfriends, members of circles of friends long since broken apart family, everyone. I set up the machine to “peripheral” so I could keep my eyes open and make sure there was nothing suspicious happening. By the end of the night I had a splitting headache from trying to watch them all. Even with the machine running it was impossible to do it all. I decided to turn it off and try to just use the most basic method, my eyes. I even had a routine I set up. I would read lips on certain people if they were closer than ten inches from each other when talking. I would keep a mental note of who was talking to who so I could eventually put the pieces together. I had a piece of paper with all of their names on it and arrows connecting them. I could see who was talking to who and try and figure out why they were talking to that person. Some of these relationships didn’t add up to me. Some of these things I lip read people talking about didn’t make sense. At one point someone would tell me one thing and then I would later find out from my map that it was a lie. The conspiracy was getting a little heavier it seemed.

I set myself up in my car and sat there one night for over six hours. I followed them for a few hours and then sat back in the car for six hours with binoculars, a scalpel and a head full of ideas I knew would have to make sense at some point. My car would start quiet like a Belle and Sebastian a few minutes before the sun turned the sky from black to grey. She was there, he was there. I knew what was up here for the most part. The machine and everything it recorded all made sense. It was raining that night so as clear as it all was, things were kind of blurry as well.

Warm Drinks

I ended up at this bar one night. I was on some stupid “mind cleansing” vacation that I take every so often. Anyway, I think I was in Washington, Pennsylvania coming from Pittsburgh. This place was a shit hole (the city…well, the bar too). I met this woman in Radio Shack that afternoon, buying some batteries for my radio. She worked there, and after she took my “personal information”, she asked what I was doing in Pennsylvania. This was back when Radio Shack would take all your information every time you went in there. I lied and told her I worked for some computer company, and was on business in Pittsburgh, and swinging through here for the night, before heading up to Niagra Falls for some more “business”. After some small talk she mentioned there was a bar she knew of we could meet in when she got off work at 8 o’clock. I didn’t think she was that interesting to begin with, or that attractive, but she intrigued me somehow. I think I’ve met tons of these women while traveling. Just average looking women, with average personalities who are lonely, and looking to talk to someone new. It’s funny because when I’m home I have no desire to meet new people. I guess because I simply said “anything exciting to do around here?” she decided to become a host or perhaps a whore.

I guess she was not attractive at all in retrospect. She was about five feet tall, dumpy looking, and her face seemed worn, and old. I’d guess she was about forty-five years old (I was twenty-six). S My girlfriend at the time was twenty-two years old, and was extremely attractive, and intelligent; so I have no clue what the hell I was doing. I’ve always been attracted to short women, but this was the first time I discovered I was also attracted to women who looked like they could be my aunt.
I showed up at the bar at about seven-fifteen, which was aptly called “The Hole in the Wall”. I wanted to get a feel for the place. It was a Tuesday night and there were five men in the bar, one was with a woman. I checked them all out. At the bar there was one guy alone. He appeared to be some sort of construction guy in his early fifties, he was drinking Michelob, and smoking Merit ultra lights. Two seats down from him were two guys who looked like they were in their late twenties/early thirties. These two looked a little more white collar than the Michelob man, but they still looked as if they were hardened type dudes. Sitting at a booth was a man in his forties who looked like a used car salesman, complete with yellow suit, and a mustache. The woman he was sitting with was hideous. Bright red lipstick, red dress, red nylons, black shoes, long wavy brown hair that was fried dry, big tits, the whole “used car salesmen dream girl” in one package. She would definitely fuck this guy by the end of the night, there was no doubt about it. I decided to sit in the booth behind them. My girlfriend was most likely on her dinner break at work, I pictured her in her silly uniform she has to wear there. I love her.

I made eye contact with the used car guy and we both kind of nodded. I needed to see what he was drinking, so after the nod I scanned their table as I removed my jacket and hung it on the hook between our tables. It was a yellow drink so I assumed is was whiskey based most likely, she had a similar drink, but the glass was almost empty. The ashtray was littered with those thin brown cigarettes. They were here for a while. I ordered a Southern Comfort on the rocks from the waitress who was very friendly.
Apparently the used car guy was the ex-boyfriend of the woman he was sitting with, and it sounded like he fucked up somehow, and was trying to patch things up. She seemed pretty calm, and it seemed like it might have been a drug issue, not an infidelity issue. Oh well, I was sure she’d still end up fucking the guy anyway.

My “date” arrived at eight-thirty sharp and looked relatively good. I think I had had three drinks already, so this may have been a factor as well. She told me her district manager had come in and was complaining about some displays or something. I think I was looking at her body, and not listening while she was taking off her jacket, and telling me the story at the same time. I could care less about how displays are supposed to be set up in Radio Shack. She seemed generally happy, and seemed like this was a big deal to her to be with someone she had only talked to for about ten minutes. She sat down finally and I asked her what she was drinking. She said she had a rough weekend, and wanted to get drunk. I ordered her the same thing I was drinking. We got right to drinking. I think my girlfriend usually starts closing the store up at eight-thirty or so. Sometimes I’ll arrive at eight-forty-five and wait for her.

My girlfriend was home by now I was thinking to myself as I polished off my tenth drink of the night. I was all of a sudden overwhelmed with guilt as this woman was talking to me, and I was not paying attention. Guilt that I was “using” this woman, and guilt that I had just spoken to my girlfriend the morning of this meeting. Simon and Garfunkel came over the jukebox: “….do it and doo doo, feelin’ groovy…”. To escape the tortures of this guilt I thought I had rid myself of when my parents took me out of Catholic school at a young age, I suggested we leave, and get some coffee instead. Perplexed, she agreed. We left the bar, and the used car guy was still sitting there, while his date in red was on the pay phone yelling at some guy. I smelled her delicious perfume once more as we walked by her on the way out.

I had rented this cheap American car which seemed as if it would die any day now…this is the car her and I got into. She had walked over from work. She told me she knew of a diner down the street, and would direct me there. As we drove she put her hand on my knee and looked at me in ‘that way”, I smiled and put the radio on. I could barely drive, and frankly, she should have driven as she had significantly less drinks in her than I did.

I got in an argument a month before I left with a friend over which was better, Abbey Road, or “The White Album”. I’m pretty sure we were in agreement that they were both good in their own ways, but Abbey Road had more of a romantic slant to it, “The White Album” was classic, but a lot to swallow if not in the right mood. It was now I realized we were right. The local rock station was playing side one of Abbey Road, we tuned in at the beginning of “Something”, my favorite Beatles song. I don’t think there’s a more beautiful song out there. I remember the first time my girlfriend and I broke up, about a year later, we got back together, and were listening to the Beatles the night we “got back together”

She told me we should stop by my hotel before we went there, she needed to use the ladies room, and hated public restrooms. I said this would be okay, and my heart started beating a lot faster. I pulled into the parking lot, right in front of the room. I lay on the bed waiting for her to come out, as the television was playing a movie I wasn’t that familiar with. I think Wesley Snipes was in it, and something happened at the White House. She was in there for about ten minutes it seemed, although I was a bit drunk, so it could have been longer. I was looking around the room at all of the shit I had brought in from the car and thought of how I needed to get more organized when I get home. That is exactly what I need to do FIRST.
She emerged from the bathroom, and announced she was feeling a bit dizzy, and would like to hang out here for a while. I agreed as she plopped down on the bed. I was laying with my back against the back of the bed, and she was on her stomach, she put her arm around my stomach, and started lightly brushing my side with her hand. I changed the channel to Tom Snyder, he was interviewing Sandra Bullock. I always though my girlfriend looked a little like Sandra Bullock, Speed era Bullock that is. I mean my girlfriend isn’t as thin as Sandra, but has almost the same facial features. She was probably long asleep at this point, it was past one in the morning, and she always went to bed before midnight. At about three in the morning my “date” finally passed out. In a drunken haze earlier, she told me she had not had sex in over two years. I found this hard to believe, but she seemed okay. I told her it had been about a month for me, which was true. I guess I had plans to change that earlier in the night, but as Tom Snyder and Sandra Bullock lulled me to sleep I had different plans.
I think I left the hotel at five-thirty in the morning. I made the least amount of sound possible as I moved all of my stuff out. I paid the front desk, and left. I have no idea when my “date” woke up.

I arrived home nine hours later somehow and was greeted by five new messages on my machine from my girlfriend, she needed to talk to me apparently as soon as I got in she explained. I wasn’t supposed to be home for one more day, so I gave her a surprise ring...

At nine o’ clock the previous night my girlfriend left work with her co-worker who I always thought had some sort of crush on her, but seemed pretty harmless. They then went to his place to drink with some friends. People left his apartment around one in the morning. She stayed there. She got home nine hours after that.

"But I've seen your double dares everything extraordinaire I know the things you do are gonna come back"

Eight days, nine days, I can’t really remember and it doesn’t matter anyway. This recent trip had something to do with a recent relationship. Per usual online and in real life I’ll never talk about my relationships good or bad, and if I do you can assume I am lying. You should probably do that with a number of things I say. I think.

We set out on this trip last Tuesday, at the worst time to set out on a trip, late afternoon. I should have seen this is a sign this trip would make me feel like Marlow in Heart of Darkness. It was hot and rainy and we were filling a U-Haul with all of her belongings. I was responsible for what would seem like difficult tasks like pulling a washing machine and dryer up stairs through a spider web and God-knows-what infested bulkhead out of the basement up into this U-Haul truck. I had this horrible pain in my upper back for a few days before this and all of this moving actually made the pain go away. I was slightly disappointed in this as I’ve kind of grown to live with being in pain every day of my life, at least when it comes to my back. My arms and shoulders felt nice and worked from all of this lifting as well. I decided once all of this is over with and I am settled somewhere I will start lifting weights again, especially now that I have quit smoking. I immediately was reminded of how great it feels to have arms that feel like rubber from lifting heavy objects.

We would be driving from here in Massachusetts to Oklahoma City, which is in the state of Oklahoma. We would also have her two cats with us which is a whole other world of shit if you’ve ever driven with a cat in a car you know it’s probably the second worst thing to have in your car while driving long distances. The first would be another person. Driving with another person on long distances is definitely a test. A test I know I will always fail at. Like a test I didn’t even take a class for let alone study for. I think the only people you (well, me) could travel long distances with in a car is a prostitute that doesn’t charge you money and one that doesn’t have any diseases. Like a prostitute on her (or his) first day of work ever. I could travel with this person. The other person I could travel I a long distance with in a car would be a person who just died and their body is stowed away somewhere and you are basically just transporting the body. I hate having to stop when I don’t need to stop, and thankfully she isn’t one of those people that need to go to the bathroom if a drop of water is ten feet from her. You ever meet one of these people? Every time they take a sip of a drink they have to visit a restroom immediately after. I couldn’t travel with one of these. I like to push myself and try to do things like drive seven hours without stopping. I drove the first night. Of course it was raining, hot and we had cats making all sorts of noise in the car. Traffic in Massachusetts was for the most part and hot miserable rain soaked. This type of traffic is the worst kind of traffic. At one point a person pulled next to me yelling and pointing at the car we were towing. Oh yeah, we would also be towing a car on the back of this U-Haul truck. I have never been able to back up anything with a trailer. From time to time one of those know-it-all types will say something snide like “Well all you have to do is turn the wheel one way and the tires go this way, turn it the other way and they go that way” This couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re looking through these giant oddly shaped mirrors so everything is backwards. There is noise and sun in your face and the whole thing is a horrible experience. This situation would rear its ugly head the next morning. Back to this guy yelling at me to pull over: I pull over and can’t figure out what is wrong with the car we are towing. A few miles later another guy pulls up, this time I can actually hear him. Not sure if you know this but when you are going any speed over say….20 miles an hour and yell to someone at a car next to you they can’t hear you like in the movies. Now that I think of it I can’t think of one movie where this has happened. I hear “your ramps are down”. Turns out we were dragging a ramp. This was fixed. Six or seven hours later we arrived in Syracuse, NY. I would not drive this truck again until a day after we arrived in Oklahoma City because I apparently “follow people too close” to which I let her know “well, you drive too close to shit on the right”

I don’t have a laptop anymore so writing for this trip would have to be by hand, which at this point is not fun. I learned to enjoy it once I was on the train coming back. Here is what I wrote night one:

“Depressing motel, area of country and situation I am in right now. But with all things negative a positive always comes along and fixes that straight away. This kind of travelling where I am not relaxed isn’t really my idea of fun but, eh… The fun comes later. When I think of back home, and when I say back home I don’t mean ‘back home in Massachusetts’ I mean where I have spent ‘time’ the last few months and felt happiest, like myself. It’s nice to have people in my life that don’t owe me anything that I can feel completely comfortable around. I actually feel like myself. This feeling crossed with that mysterious feeling of the unknown and distance is an oddly satisfying feeling I’ve been spending time with for the last few months. I like this feeling much better than the uncomfortable feelings I sometimes feel in reality. I keep thinking I want to write a letter but then realize just living and being is good for right now. I have too much in my head to think about anything else, especially if I am happy the way it is now”

Driving through upstate New York, I have done it so much in all parts of it…well, all parts off of Route 90, which isn’t much. I like it up there. Some of it, when you start moving more west anyway, feels like it is five years ago, or even twenty years ago. There is this lonely and sad feeling of claustrophobia and emptiness that appears late at night there driving past orange lit parking lots for hours at a time. I love it and hate it up there at the same time.

From upstate New York to Oklahoma City, the trip was pretty uneventful, long stretches of road where neither of us talked for hours, I dozed off for a good chunk of the time. Other times we had the radio tuned to talk radio and everything there is right wing and/or religious. I don’t really follow politics or care much about any of the issues they talk about, but really listening to some of these people I have to imagine any sane person with even a little bit of education that I know in real life would agree with me that literally every single thing some of these people were talking about was complete crap. One show we listened to in Missouri (the state where I thought [for the second time now] that I was about to be raped at any minute by some cackling redneck) had a show talking about how bad video games were. The woman prefaced the story with “Video games, like other horrible things like abortion, pornography and homosexuality…” The people calling in were worse. I briefly thought of calling in but realized even trying reason with folks down there is probably not even fun. Dennis Miller has a show, where he complained about Barack Obama and so did his callers. My idea of politics especially after this recent election is its just listening to people complaining and arguing about how they think things should be done. I’m not sure I can think of something worse than this. Conversations about the weather may be a close second. I didn’t really let listening to these fools ruin anything for me; there are people out there who think their opinions matter, what can I do about that? Yeah, ignore them.
I won’t bore you with the details of the rest of part 1 of this trip as it’s also something I don’t feel like reflecting on right now especially that momentum has already started moving forward.

"I trust no emotion
I believe in locomotion
But I've turned to rust as we've discussed"

I caught a train out of Oklahoma City early Tuesday morning for a brief four hour journey south to Ft Worth, Texas. The night before I left, I slept about two and a half hours. Monday night. The next time I would go to sleep would be Thursday night/Friday Morning around 3:30 AM.

The double-decker train was an empty train, a pleasure compared to the rest of the trip which was back to back full trains. Arriving in Ft Worth it was hot as piss outside and although as the case with most train stations it was a shady area of town, I only got approached by one guy asking for change to “buy an ice cream”. I hate having tons of change in my pockets especially if I am going to be sitting for long periods of time I handed him a handful of dimes and pennies and he made his way into the train station and did indeed come out a few minutes earlier with an ice cream. Who doesn’t love an honest beggar? I would also meet an honest beggar in Chicago who asked for money for “The Jack Daniels Foundation”, I of course gave him a crisp dollar bill. I did quite a bit of writing on the trains, and since I didn’t really have a full night of sleep over three days some of it made no sense. Here is some of it:

“6. If enemies are not close. You will automatic win any battle. For I will move far from.”

“When I reach California I will burn this book finally. Words in here from 1992. Some guy in 1992 wrote about long forgotten women. Such messy writing that I purposely used so no one could read it if they found. Who knows who all of these spirits are in here, I can’t imagine I will ever need to refer back to this to improve anything in my life. I will throw this book in a barrel. Like in Repo Man when they have the ‘Plate-o-shrimp’ conversation. You know, like dudes under bridges in Los Angeles burning shit in barrels. Having a couple of beers”

“Feel like I will start seeing things any minute now. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in whateveramountofdays now. I feel like ripping this map in front of me into a trillion little pieces. I stare at it and the schedule for hours. Not minutes, hours. This is all you can do here sit and wait sit and wait sit and wait. People are off sleeping, sweating and smelling up that car back there. This thick warm bad breathy hospital silence lit by a thin strip of lights on the ceiling as you sway to the back of each car trying not to bump heads and legs spilling into the aisle. You get good at this acrobatic feat by the end of the trip. Even in the shape I am in, like if I tried to operate heavy machinery, it would not be pretty. I can’t believe that this trip take 24 fucking hours to get from Chicago to Boston. It sounds like some sort of trap the Gods of confusion set. Let’s make this guy think something is true that isn’t true. Wait, what? Some moments here I blink my eyes but they don’t re-open. I enjoy sitting in these cars writing even though I just saw stars while writing that last sentence. I saw an Amish woman at a pay phone at the Chicago train station”

The first half of this trip was pretty depressing for the most part. The second half I met a number of people that I spent a good amount of time with and finally as painfully tiring the trip was I felt like I was having a good time and was able to keep my mind in other places other than where it actually was. This first group of people I saw for a couple of days walking around and hanging together. A young man about 22, but maybe younger. Big tall, could be menacing, but a baby face. At least 6’ 4”. Also, had one leg and was on a crutch. There were two other girls, around the same age. One was a nerdy looking girl, glasses with a jeweled chain on them to hang from her neck whatever those are called I have no idea. Other girl seemed young and sheltered, kind of an unfortunate look that I won’t go into but let us say she kind of looked like this bass player from a Canadian rock band I won’t mention the name of. I kind of got the vibe that this girl was sort of a pain in the ass and these other kids did not like her. When I did meet the three of them, at the end of my trip to Chicago, or about four hours left in that journey they were mean to her. Right to her face. The young girl did not understand sarcasm and was getting ruined and not knowing it. I felt kind of bad and then remembered this is how young kids are, they judge and judge and pick on and pick on until they eventually settle in on some set of standards which is: Be a dick. Don’t be a dick. I picked the latter when it was my time. On the other hand, these other two, the nerdy white girl who did in fact know things about Star Trek and asked me “is that Gandalf?” regarding a tattoo on my arm seemed to have been around, and this kid with one leg. He was writing in some little notebook. At first when I saw him I said to myself “jeez, fucking trench coat mafia over here”. Same sort of reaction you have if you see like a Juggalo (or the more rare but better Jugallete!). You always say to yourself “Oh yup a juggallo…where’s the hatchet man thingy? Oh yup there it is on his thing there, does he have the…oh yeah there’s that thing too they all have.” And then you go on wondering what Insane Clown Posse even sound like and wondering why people hate ICP fans. There is clearly not one good reason to care about these people good or bad is there? This kid though, here I am judging him the second I see him, meanwhile I looked like an even bigger asshole on a number of occasions from age 10 to say age….39 so yeah. He was a nice kid, the nerdy girl was nice but I could see was a little too “oh my god I am in art school, check me out” for me. The annoying young girl would be on my next train from Chicago to Boston. She was going to Ohio somewhere with her mom. These people looked like they stepped off the set of Little House on the Prairie. The girl may have been annoying, but was 18 and probably never left the little town in Arizona she was from. She sat with me on the next train in the lounge car while a line of folks waited for food, coffee and drinks. She was very loud and told me a story of some young kid who ran his car into a metal fence at her school and blah blah blah eventually winding her way to September 11th somehow telling me in an un-ironic way “now that is a day I will NEVER forget”. I replied, “well yeah, you’re not supposed to forget that day”. She mentioned they had it on the television at her school when it happened and I told her we had a similar situation when I was in high school when the space shuttle with Christa McAuliffe blew up. She said “was that Apollo 13?”. I said “I’m not that old, jeez”. The whole time the line of people can hear every word of this painful conversation until finally she leaves and people stop looking at me and having eye-rolling contests with me. I never saw her again.

I met some interesting artists and musicians later in the evening, a tall pretty girl from Portland, Oregon originally from New Hampshire. We both thought we looked familiar but I think she was much younger which leads me to believe we probably do not know each other at all. I talked with her and these two artists from the Oakland area, one also played guitar and trombone with Citizen Fish. Very cool down to earth people I enjoyed shooting the shit with for a few hours.

The last day of the trip my head and body were gone. I spent the better part of the day dozing off for a few seconds here and a few seconds there. I probably looked like I was on drugs. The last time I felt semi-normal on this part of this journey was for my long layover in Chicago where I left the station, went to the Sears Tower, shot up the elevator but the lines were too long for the deck so I just went back to the lobby and had steak and some sangria before heading back to a Starbucks to charge my phones and then back to the station to wait. It was nice not moving back and forth on a train. Had a couple of good phone calls and then back to hell.

The evening is when I met these folks above. The next day, the last day where I never even attempted to go to sleep until I eventually reached the critical/best point of being exhausted the “now I’m completely wired and don’t even know what it feels like to be tired”. From around noon on the last day until we arrived in Boston around 10:30 PM I was wired. I spent about three or four hours with this African-American woman maybe in her early 50’s. She was a writer and also a minister . We talked about life for a long time and it was great. She was an intense person and we connected on all sorts of subjects. One of those people you meet along the way that gives off a cool vibe. She has a book available online that I am going to check out. One thing I enjoy about taking these trains is you are trapped on this thing with these people and you are kind of forced to talked to them for hours at a time as long as they are willing to do the same. Most of the time it turns out to be a great conversation. As I was saying to the woman “everyone’s story is interesting on some level. If they have the gift to tell a story then that story is even better”
I spent the remainder of the day with a guy named Dennis. He was from Milwaukee and was heading to Dorchester to see his mother who was sick. Dennis, turning 50 drives a tractor trailer, and has been with the same woman for I think he said twenty-six years. He kind of looked like Snoop Dogg, which I’m sure he would take as an insult as he told me he didn’t like rap music. He had some great stories of driving trucks in different parts of the country. We both mentioned different parts of the country we enjoyed seeing. He clearly has more miles on me and more states but I feel like I have enough experience to talk about a number of places in the US anyway. One thing I really like with sitting with some of these strangers for hours is how much you can learn about people if they are willing to tell stories and are as bored as you are with just sleeping in your seat all day. So hanging with him until the last few minutes of the journey was great as we were still swapping stories about areas of Massachusetts. Good times indeed. There were a number of other people I spent some time with but most of them weren’t as interesting or were kind of messed up.
Best part of this trip was probably the last couple of days. It was a long mentally and physically exhausting trip that I still haven’t fully absorbed. If anything it was an exercise in patience and a preview of the lengths of road I have to travel myself in August. I forgot how long some of these drives get. A three hour chunk of driving through nowhere has the feel of a five hour chunk of driving. The August trip has an ultimately happier ending for the most part, and I will have a laptop by then for documenting that trip as I go with hopefully less stream of conscious than this, which I am not even going to proofread. Here it is.

pics from the trip are here