The Slow Boat to Mexico

So the slow boat to China has begun her long and fateful journey.  Our new big white Buie Lesabre has got us here to Mexico in one piece. Our trip began with a couple days in beautiful Seattle. We bought a car on our 2^nd ay in America. We started off with a busy schedule to keep, and wasted no time in getting a hold of Buie, which we got for a steal in the end – 1200 and legit from a couple of Mexicans at a dealership.

       That afternoon we got her on the road, on down to Portland at nightfall, a bit of a stroll around three blocks, saw nothing too interesting except for a statue made of push-bikes, before heading across to the coast. We hit the seaside town of Seaside sometime in the gloomy night and found a place near the beach where we parked our new home. We drank wine on the beach in celebration.  We woke the next day and had a stroll around lovely Seaside, before beginning a beauty couple of days of coasting down the 101, through all those sleepy waterfront towns and beautiful headlands and unreal rocks and beaches along the way between Seaside and the Golden Gate Bridge. Picked up a couple of hitchhikers along the way to return the favour for getting out of BC, which we did pretty well in the end, truth be told. 2 days between Kelowna and Vancouver, with a long night of walking and sleeping in orchards. Good rides the whole way. Next to no waiting. Signs are way better than thumbs. 

So, we decided to rest our weary bones in SF for a short while. We spent a day wandering and digging it, making it out to Haight-Ashbury for a successful mission, which was followed by a prolonged period of pretty much doing nothing for an extended period of time, which was great, and long overdue. Just a cheeky chew on a chewsdy, watching the trains go by into the night on a wicked windy start to Wednesday cooped up in our big boat on Hyde Street. San Fran is a gorgeous place.

After one more day of walkabouts and drinking lazily watching girls in parks of San Francisco, we were tired from the hills and the general craziness of the place. We woke up in our boat sweaty, hungover and filthy and knew it was time to go South. Without further ado we revved up the old inboard and kicked the old boat out onto the highway through the golden hills and coastlines of California, all the way down the line to that big ol’ promised land; that gritty, smoggy wasteland that is Los Angeles, California. 

On our arrival we checked into a rather cheap and really quite nice hostel in Inglewood. Dr. Dre was right: Inglewood is rough. We stayed a couple of nights in the hostel there. Mostly I stayed poolside and tried to sort out my life while Mikie went to Universal Studios. I managed to lose my ATM card in San Francisco, which had to be remedied as soon as possible. So I had no money in LA, but at least I got to relax. We did have a few beers on the second night, and possibly I overdid it, but that was LA. All i saw of the city was on the drive-by on our way out to Las Vegas the next day. Sunset Strip and Hollyood be damned. Mikie seemed to have had a good day out there, though. 

Next thing we knew we were growling off into the desert, along that Bat-Country route of Hunter’s, through shithole Barstow and Baker and red rocks and shrubs and not much else before a long descent through the sands into the unexplainable mirage of gambling and smut called Las Vegas, Nevada. We checked into a wierd hostel named after some kind of sexual cat, which was right between a strip-club and a rock & roll tattoo parlour, across the road from a place where you can get married by Elvis; Old Vegas. We dropped our bags off and set to walking. And man, did we do some walking.

We first walked into a place to get a cheap pizza buffet for dinner, watching sullen gamblers drinking and playing virtual roulette. No excitement in winning, sad faces. We then hit the Strip, Las Vegas Boulevard, towards the lights and casinos of New Vegas. Past the Stratosphere, a huge spire in the cut of a spaceship, where people were bungee jumping from the towering roof, and further on to the Circus Circus, where we watched the Argentinean flying trapeze and roamed through the casino madness and  incredible theme park. Las Vegas is a mental place, as we walked further into town we were handed pocketfuls of smut cards offering cheap deals with whores with names like Brandy, Alyssa... Faith? The power bills of that Neon Babylon must be through the roof as well; but they certainly know how to throw down some entertainment, that’s for sure. 

On the streetside of the Treasure Island casino we were witness to an extravagant and impressive pirate show, complete with singing numbers, splashing water,  huge explosions. We wandered though the pink and tacky Flamingo, we walked and walked and walked until we couldn’t be bothered with walking any more, and then we walked home. I liked Las Vegas, glad I didn’t spend much money there, but it is an exciting and attractive place for sure.

After a good night’s sleep we got up and on the move, asked directions to the Grand Canyon. On the move again; this time trough the Mars-like cliffs of Arizona, past signs for Death Valley and such places. Then on through rocky plateaus and landscapes I cannot describe, all beautiful, all day, until we finally reached the gate to the national park: discovering that they wanted a fee of 25 dollars for the privilege of seeing it. This was a bummer, as dollars are many pesos. It was drawing towards nighfall anyhow, so we parked the car in the bush not far from the entryway and made camp while we mulled over the possibilities of tomorrow. There were half-hearted ideas to sneak in on foot and hitchhike the remaining distance, etc., but we didn’t. Mikie was rather deterred by the fact that he had originally thought that the Grand Canyon was a huge meteorite crater, and didn’t want to see a river (nevermind how grand), while I just didn’t want to pay the 25 bucks. We decided to go down to Mexico instead, cutting a southbound line through the cacti and dust and sweltering heat of Arizona, through Phoenix, and out... Shame we never got to check out New York and the East, but money was burning too fast already. Throught Phoenix, and out...

So stay tuned for tales of the “Free Zone”, Guadalajara and Agoonygoogoo, soon! Mexico, muy bien!

Bush craziness... sweet, sweet Jesus beams

Well troops, sorry about the long long time off the radar. Bush livin’ has left me a little pressed for time and energy, I tell you what. So, how to even begin to fill you in on the last four months in the bush, and the plans for the road ahead; given that I’m within a month of leaving Canada and heading on that long-time-coming southbound adventure?

It’s been a serious experience, living in a tent for the last four months. The first two months of my time out here in the Ontario bush were spent planting trees. It’s a seriously hard way to earn coin, at 8.5 cents a tree, but it is what it is. All the more reason to stick more of spruce trees in the muck, anyways. There was definitely a competitive side to it as well, it even felt more like a professional sport than a job at times: the van rides on the way to the block every morning with the crew; everyone going through their morning rituals, pulling on boots, duct-taping everything. After work, numbers were called out. The emphasis on numbers brought in a real sense of competition. Everyone has someone they wanted to beat on a daily basis, not in the least ourselves and our old P.B.’s. In the end, I wound up doing pretty well at it. I planted 68000 trees, with a personal best of 3400 in one day.

                Camp life was great, too. By the end of it we had become a pretty tight-knit little family/community. Every weekend we’d have our booze nights around the campfire, shit would go down, everybody had a time. We were well fed, and all of us would go through the same shit every day, which made life a little easier. At times, it was hell out here, though. Between the bugs and the exertion of the job itself and the pushing everything to the limit and the isolation of the bush, shit oftentimes got pretty rough. Especially the time it rained for eight days without break. By about day 4 of that spell, everything that everybody owned was soaked, people were sleeping in puddles in their tents (myself included), everybody was cold and miserable. And then, on the eight day, the rain turned to snow. Quite a few people left after that. And that was the end of may. No more than three days later it began to get hot. The snow that brought the summer on. Only in Canada.

                I had plenty of wildlife encounters, as well. Bear cubs, wolf cubs, a cougar, many bears, a few moose, I caught a salamander in a swamp, owls and rabbits, etc. By far the best animal encounter for me was on my birthday. Immediately following a rowdy “Happy Birthday to You”, a huge moose ran out onto the road in front of the van and just stared pegging it u the road in front of us, running away from us along the road. It was crazy.

After planting finished up at the end of June, those of us who were staying on to do thinning (less than half of us) had a week off to do whatever we wanted before going back out to the bush for some more punishment. I went with my buddies Marek and Artur to Montreal. It was pretty much a bender, Montreal is great. The Jazzfest was on, Canada day was on – although it was pretty much hijacked by the Spanish, after their Eurocup win. But, after a five days of drinking, dancing, pigs on spits (food!), and just great times with great people in a great city, it was time to get on back to the bush.

Our next job was thinning. This basically consisted of going out into older planting pieces with a big brushcutter saw and mowing down the competition surrounding the existing crop trees. A substantially more dangerous line of work than planting ( a German guy named Mike had a bad fall and chopped two of his fingers off), but actually pretty fun once you got in the swing of it – charging around and dropping poplars and balsams left, right, and centre. The pay was a little better than planting, too. Paid this time by the hectare cleared. 

And so, after two months of that shenanigans, the time has come to get on the road again. I am now on my way across to Kelowna to catch up with Mikie, who I’ve not seen in four months, and hopefully doing a couple of weeks work to buffer out the hip pocket before beginning the long and dusty trail down south. I’ve said my goodbyes to Calgary, my little home away from home, and I’m just about to the end of my solo road for some time. I’m really looking forward to seeing my bro and doing some gin-soaked brainstorming about the whole thing because, as yet, we’re rather short on plans of action and whatnot, but these things will open up as it comes. The butterflies of movement are well and truly back in business.  Party on, Wayne.