McDonalds

Bonnie Jean from the shoe area of REI gave me her phone number... she wanted to take a freight train journey, I thought she was beautiful. As we got kicked out of the train yard in SLC we were told " trains cut peoples legs off"

In Ogden we hid in a boxcar and waited, in Pocatello we used the Amtrak waiting and bathrooms. In Portland, we cleaned up in a McDonald's bathroom and learned that we we were not in Seattle .

the last time I saw her she was pregnant, she promised her husband that she would never hitchhike again.

dropped off a cornice and out of view

Sometimes skiing uphill is more satisfying than skiing down, I never would’ve guessed that, but then again for most of my skiing life I did not even know that skiing up hill was much of a possibility.

But going up hill gets one to the top, and you get to choose the route and the speed then once you get there you get to keep going, and going… or not.

Yesterday was a perfect day on a mountain… mountains… Up and down, untracked snow.

straight razor shave

In the movie My Name Is Nobody, a scruffy cowboy (Henry Fonda) rides into a hot and dusty town, gets off his horse and goes into a barber shop that has 3 dangerous looking guys, one in a barbers smock, hangs is guns on a hook “I’d like a shave” we can just see, out of sight of our hero, someone tied up in a back room, it looks like a barber, the cowboy sits, gets all lathered up and lifts his chin fully exposing his neck, making himself perfectly vulnerable, just as the imposture barber lifts a straight razor to his neck we hear a click and see what looks like the barrel of a gun poke through the apron covering the cowboy’s lap, the barber gulps and shaves the neck, the barber is sweating and the cowboy looks calm… eventually the cowboy walks out and the three men are dead….

I was about ten when i saw the movie, but I wanted a shave, to raise my chin and expose my neck.

While riding a bus in southern China, I do not remember the name of the city, I saw a man on the side of the road sitting in a chair another man had a straight and was giving him a shave. It was cold and nowhere had heat so I was cherishing my beard, but two weeks later when I was much further south and it was getting very warm I went out to find a shave.

Through a doorway not much different from the one Henry Fonda walked through, a man was cutting hair. I walked in and waited my turn. Sat and gestured that I wanted all my hair cut...all of it from neck to top of my head, all off.

The barber quickly dispatched most of my hair with an electric razor that was plugged into the overhead light, then pulled out a straight razor to finish the job. He wiped my face down with a warm cloth then started pulling out each hair on my face… ok he wasn’t actually doing that but it’s what it felt like. At this point, under the light of the single bulb plus the light from the cracks in the wood slat walls I noticed that he had a mole on his chin with a long hair sticking out, and a few longish whiskers under his nose and I wondered if he had never shaved his own face...

My next straight razor shave was much better.

hitching again

I left my bike across town yesterday so today it was back to hitchhiking. As I was making my way, a truck driver made eye contact and shrugged his shoulders as he passed, and the next driver coming down the road did the same thing. What did they mean? Could they not know what I was doing? Could they both… as I was actively musing about this the first truck came back up the road and flipped a U’y and I had my ride.

Bernie, had to make a stop on the way but took me right to my destination.

birth

I came out into the world and pee'd, the doctor said, "it's a boy and his plumbing works." but I do not remember that, I do remember being breast fed though, and my Grandmother standing over my crib, she died when I was a year old.

the mission to get my bike

now that i returned from Boston I can drive my house around but i don't really want to, so yesterday i set out across town on foot but with my thumb i, on a journey to get my bike from the Urban Forrester homestead. i bet i walked about a half mile... and about 20 cars passed before someone stopped. I used to get kinda angry when guys in empty pick up trucks didn't stop. I could understand when little old ladies, families, or unaccompanied women don't give me a ride, but walking down a remote road and a empty truck and guys in the front and they just drive by.... but not anymore, walking is good, but getting a ride and meeting a new person is better.

Several years ago i interviewed a man who walked highways, never asked for rides (with his thumb or other ways) at first he would get so angry and he claimed that it made him crazy, (i'm sure he was crazy before though) then one day he stopped even asking and his life was instantly better because he stopped worrying about something that he could do nothing about.

I'm not much for heros, but maybe i can make an exception