An Interruption

Last March climbing in KY. Thanks to Peter Lee-Thompson for the catch.

6/21/08 - 15 Hours Later

Through the Canadian Rockies and into Idaho. We stopped at the border, and were searched. "Hey Jim, I need your nose," spouted an old squat woman. Jim was a man, they couldn't afford a dog, so they hired a man that looked like one. Jim stuck his nose in our trunk, knocked a few things onto the pavement, and gave the squat woman a shrug. We went on our way and into Montana.

Glacier National Park met us late at night, and we stole a campsite. The managers chewed us out in the morning, but were old and useless. We drove the wrong way on the one way road, played loud music, and got drunk, and heard about it each morning.

There is only one bowling alley in the area, shared by three towns, but each town knew where it was. We got there at three in the afternoon, picked up beer, and shotgunned three each behind the building. There were two other people bowling, 24 lanes, and a bar. We bought a few games and a few pitchers. We got loud, Tyler went crazy on an arcade machine, almost kicked it in, and were kicked out.

We cooked pasta in the afternoon sun, spilled, and burned our mouths. All the doors on our car were open, music blaring and things falling out all over the pavement. A car of two backwater girls pulled up and we asked them if they wanted to join the party. they didn't. Tyler got their numbers and we sat around, finishing our watery pasta, nursing our mouths.

Somehow we got back to our campsite, and fell asleep in a downpour.

6/20/08 - Singing in Vancouver: Part II

We woke up the next morning and ate an entire box of their cereal, said we would get them back, and left to go play music on the streets of Vancouver.

Armed with directions, tourist hot spots, and a special map that we had to bring back in pristine condition for the uncle's wife, we made our way downtown. The cheapest parking was thirteen Canadian dollars, and we agreed that we would sit out on the street until we paid for our parking. It was overcast, and dreary, like Portland and Seattle should have been. We made for the train station, and after being ping-pong around by bad directions we found it and set up in the busiest hall.

We only made eight dollars or so in Portland, but there aren't many one dollar coins, and no two dollar coins like there are in Vancouver. We were hopeful, and smiled as we hummed harmonies, and made up riffs and lyrics, and watched the coins drop. Derek improvised on his guitar, Tyler on the pots and mugs. Lance and I helped out with the vocals and kept our "Feats of Strength," sign in lain view. I bagged a two dollar coin with five one-armed push-ups, while the other three cheered and hummed and riffed away. The hall we played in was more like a tube with a shiny tile floor that bounced and threw our voices until the echoes rang into the ears of shop owner nearby who asked us to leave, or stop. We stopped to count our haul. Derek pulled some coins from his pocket. He had a theory of keeping a small amount of money in the bowl, and the rest in his pocket, insurance against robbers or to make us look more pathetic than we were. It was a good theory. We wound up with nearly twenty dollars, and decided to move outside and try for a little longer, but only added three dollars and some change to our pot.

With a ten dollar profit after the parking fee we looked for food and used our $2.50 judiciously. We looked into pooling our money together for beer, but the prices were outrageous. I don't care if Bud Light is an import in Canada, it should never cost $20.00 for a six pack.

The rest of our stay in Vancouver was relaxing, and uneventful. We stayed another night and woke up to an empty house. We packed our things slowly, thinking about the drive ahead; Through the Canadian Rockies, into Montana to Glacier National Park. Derek forgot to lock the front door, and I clicked the knob and tried the handle. I doubt it would have mattered.

6/20/08 - Singing in Vancouver

We finally made it to the customs agent, a dead-eyed drone that welcomed us into Canada. I must have been just as run down as the agent, because we locked eyes for a second and he gave me a small nod. He asked why we were coming into Canada. For the past hour I had been reminiscing while staring at the shadow of a large defined cloud. The shadow was in Canada, and we were stuck here in American traffic with shadowless American clouds. I wanted to say I was going to Canada for their clouds, but that would have gone out the window in a hurry.

We got in and walked around Vancouver. All big cities seem the same after a while. The downtown area is too rich, the traffic is bad, and the same shops again and again, the same people, just a different skyscraper and a different team to root for from town to town, something to keep heads from spinning. I liked Vancouver though because there were constant floating planes flying into the harbor near by. We watched for a while as the planes came in against a white and green mountain backdrop.


We met Derek's uncle, a kind bald man with a soft voice. He was in the film business, and said his career peaked when he was 18 years old and sold a script to Saturday Night Live. He asked is pasta was okay for dinner and we all laughed and nodded promptly.

We ate the pasta on the floor, sitting on cushions, with the exception of Lance, who sat on an overstuffed recliner without a care, like a king.

The lights are very orange now, with dark blue light leaking in from the windows. Talk of jazz standards between Derek and the uncle flutters and dies, and picks up again. A large collection of classic and not-so-classic films to my left, almost all on VHS. Braveheart takes up two VHS tapes, which seems appropriate. Laughter erupts from Tyler and the uncle’s daughter, a shiny-cheeked smiley girl our age, a vegetarian in love with Indian culture. The orange light seems warmer. I can't seem to scribble fast enough, and my hand is cramping up, forcing a break to join in the conversation.

Coming back to the page it seems like my hand is falling apart, other parts are following. Juggling multiple roles of big brother, friend, positive example, while trying to explore and stay upbeat, but it's not always true. It feels like a challenge from the road. My back and eyes are sore. My ears are open. Maintain.

Derek and the uncle have guitars out now, and we're singing a lazy rendition of Here Comes the Sun. Derek and his uncle combined knew most of the words, while the rest of us chipped in occasionally. We stop and the conversation turns dull, to gas prices and other safe topics we had heard so many times before. Pulling up my shirt sleeve my upper arm reveals a small galaxy of dead, peeling skin. Thoughts of San Diego rush back, it seems like a long time ago.

Their VHS collection is not alphabetized. There is a small yellow book in the bathroom titled Instant Enlightenment. And strange music from a dusty worn piano. Before long I'm laying on an impermanent mattress, staring up at the stucco ceiling next to my little brother. Looking up at the tangle of frozen drips, like frosting, I see our route planned, and a message I can't make out because my arms aren't long enough to read ceiling Braille.

6/18/08 - Dump on the road, off to Seattle

We woke up early the following morning to avoid paying for our spot. I usually drove the morning shifts; I liked starting the day on the road. Derek was riding shotgun, passed out. When he woke up we shot the shit for a while. We saw some signs for Mt. St. Helen's and decided that we wouldn't be missing anything getting into Seattle at eight in the morning. The detour was about fifty miles, but the ride was smooth and we were the only ones on the road. By quarter to nine we stopped at a visitor's center, but they didn't open for another hour. We pulled ahead maybe 400 feet to a scenic look out. None of us knew what Mt. St. Helen's looked like, but we saw a predominant peak off in the ridgeline and decided that was it. We kicked around a bit, Derek improvised on the guitar and Tyler banged on some pots. I climbed some loose rocks across the street, and jumped off. Lance lay down or sat on a cooler. We made breakfast. I had a different flavor of oatmeal, and sat in the sun. Tyler had to crap, and decided to do it in the middle of the road. When he finished some cars passed, but none of them ran over the shit. Tyler took a few pictures of it, one with the light reflecting off a particularly nice piece reaching toward the sky. We sat around a while longer and left for Seattle.

The crap in the road was probably the most interesting thing that happened in Washington. We saw my cousins and Aunt in their nice pace in Redmond, where all the Microsoft millionaires live, and were treated nicely, to good food, and warm beds. It was nice and safe and overall tame. I did not see much of Seattle, and thought it was hiding it's true self from us. We were there two days and both were sunny and out of the ordinary. When we left my aunt told us we could stay as long as we wanted, that we didn't have to rush off. I didn't know how to tell her I was bored and restless so I didn't, and we left after hugs and pictures.

6/15/08 - Inching into Canada, thinking about Oregon

It's blue outside in Vancouver, and it smells like hundreds of cows. The rest of the group is inside where it's warm and orange, with lots of music and smiles, just behind me. The ground is cool and soft on my feet. Another full stomach, more hospitality, more manners and small talk. I took a shower here, probably the last one until the wedding back in Chicago, that half waypoint. We inched into Canada today, waiting in traffic for over an hour at the border.

I thought back on our eleven-hour drive out of Yosemite to Eugene, Oregon. We met Derek's friend Remy after his tenth drink of the night. He was short with a straw cowboy hat and wild eyes. He smoked cat nip cigarettes and make sudden movements. After a lot of coaxing and repeated questioning directly into Remy's ear we made it to his ex-girlfriends apartment near the university campus. We had been cleared to pitch out tents in the backyard. When we got there a party was in full swing, and I danced through the living room with a beer in hand, and a giant pack on my back. "Oh, you must be the campers!" one shouted over the music. I laughed and made for the kitchen, then out to the backyard, where I had to clear a group of people to set up my tent amidst sidelong glances. We were hungry and went back into the kitchen to use their stove for pasta, and ate a lot of their food while waiting for the water to boil.

We camped the nest night outside of Eugene, near the coast. Remy said he knew the way, but we almost ran out of gas looking for this place, never found it, and by the time we crashed illegally in some state trailer park, I was ready to wring his neck. I was hungry and tired of following this guy. We all ate like wolves that night, without a word to each other, without so much as a glance away from out bowls illuminated by small pools of light, like the only thing that existed was macaroni and sauce.

I slept well that night, it was cold and the wind smelled different than the Midwest. The next morning we said goodbye to Remy, he was off to his pig farm outside of Eugene. We packed up the car and set out eyes on Portland, making it there in a couple hours, driving easily along the coast.

When we reached Portland I got off at the nearest climbing gym and hit the wall for a few hours. I smelled terrible and everyone knew it. I had rivers of sweat that cleaned the dirt off my arm in vein-like patterns. I climbed hard and it felt good to move something besides my right foot. I met up with the guys in the late afternoon. We bummed around Portland a while, cooking on the street near a closed coffee house. Their wireless Internet still worked, and Derek’s laptop picked up a signal. At one point I was sitting with a computer in my lap, and a stove in front of me in the middle of Oregon. I remember laughing about it.

The sun was slow to fall that night, and after dinner we decided to play some music on the streets for a while, try our luck. Lance and I don't play an instrument, but that didn't matter. We sang, and during solos brainstormed on things we could do. There were handstands, one-armed push-ups, climbing random things, and if none of that we could always hum along. We ended up making eight dollars that night, and scored a pretty good sized nugget from a couple of stoners that walked by giggling in low-pitched voices.

An old hippie named Willow came and sat with us, chatting away and teetering in a cross-legged position. She had greasy gray braids hanging down her neck and a few missing teeth, but still managed to blow out a tune on her dirty harmonica. She gave us a book of folk songs entitled,"Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads," and signed it with a shaky hand in a scattered combination of all capital letters, cursive, print and pictures.

It read:
"To Derik, MAX, Tyler, LANCE,
thanks for the jammin, keep jammin in the
streets and & everywhere else

peace, love, and a smiley face,
Willow

I HOPE our Paths + again in this life or Another"

It was dark now, and the stores were all closing up. We were energized and giddy at our success, and thought to ask some of the closing restaurants if they were throwing out any food. About an hour later we had a bundle of spring rolls, rice, sauce, and a few old scones and pastries for dessert. We sat on a curb laughing and eating, excited and inspired talk, grand plans for all the rest of the bakeries and pizza joints we came across, when a pair of true buskers walked past and stopped to compare loot. They had three-quarters of a good-looking pizza, and offered it up, they looked stoned. We accepted and offered some spring rolls. They were dirtier than we were, or at least their clothing was. There was a taller one with long dreadlocks and a bent neck that made his face lean to the left, and his features followed along with the tilt, like his face was melting. The other one was pale and quiet with an oversized coat and dilated pupils. He didn't say a word, but the melted face made up for it. "You'd have to be an idiot to starve in Portland!" he cackled and elbowed the oversized coat; he sat motionless and didn't speak. We said goodbye to the two and made for the car. There was something eerie about that guy in the oversized coat. We were on our way to Seattle, and drove for maybe an hour before scamming a campsite nearby.

6/12/08 - Half Dome

We hiked to the top of Half Dome today. Roughly 8 miles each way with a steady incline all the way to the top. It was my idea, and I could tell the guys were nervous about it. Hell, they probably did not even want to do it, but I tried to keep the spirits up, and after a short breakfast we packed our bags and started the daylong hike.

There is not much to say about the hike itself. It is absolutely beautiful, but crowded. People in all the wrong places. Near the waterfall, huddling around an animal or an overlook. It cheapened the experience. Too many cameras, too accessible. I tried to think what this place must have looked like to the first pair of human eyes. It was a fantasyland, a paradise. Enormous granite formations jutting out from a carpet of healthy green trees, waterfalls and rivers in every direction. And the damned people.

The last one hundred feet or so takes you up a low angle slab to the peak. The slab has hosted a lot of foot traffic over the years, and has been polished to s sheen. Two steel cables have been dropped down on either side of this polished path for people to cling to. There are also a series of wooden boards set up for footholds. From a distance it looked like a mass exodus, or just a lot of unhappy people waiting in line at the bank.

I got to the peak before the other three, rested a while, and ate a lot of some guys trail mix. He offered it to me when he got back and I said thanks but I was all right. I took his picture for him. I was there maybe an hour when I remember Derek was terrified of heights and he might have opted to stay at the bottom. I quickly rushed down the steel cables, when halfway down I bumped into Lance, and we headed to the top again.


Derek made it up soon after with heavy breaths and a crazed look in his eye. "Did I mention I'm afraid of heights?" were the first words out of his mouth. Lance and I laughed and I gave Derek a hug. I was proud of these guys. I asked where Tyler was, and Derek said he left him down at the beginning of the cables, Tyler was afraid of heights too. It was a bummer, but we took some pictures, talked about the hike, and milled around on the top for another hour. When we decided to head back to see Tyler, he was coming up the cables and the day was complete. He had overcome his fear too.

We laughed and walked around again, taking the tour for the third time, but it felt like the first again. It was great to be traveling with these guys. Lance said this was not his thing, and did not see what I got out of it.

From the top looking north to where we are headed. North to unknown territory for all four of us. To Eugene and Portland, then on to Seattle and Vancouver. The dust is beginning to settle and the Trip is slowly showing itself to us.