So as I sat their in globe, eating those scrumptious hot pockets to my hearts content, my host took it upon himself to ask me where I was headed next. I told him I was headed down the 70 into
(my host)
“Oh man, your heading through the Indian reservation then? You better watch it man, they hatchet-murder white people out there. Your aloud to drive though and that’s it, your not even supposed to get out of your car”
I was a bit suspicious however, only if because I thought he might have made the term “hatchet murder” up. So I asked one of his neighbors as I left Globe what he thought about the Indian reservation on my route. He was a big ol’ farmer looking type who spoke with a long southern drawl.
"Oh it’s not as bad as he say’s I’m sure. I’ve heard tha’ there be people who come down from the mountains who skin cattle, and then throw the skins on the roofs of the white folk’s houses in the area –don’t ask me why- and if yah see them doing it the’ll kill yah sure.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of this ether, mainly because I didn’t understand a damn thing he was talking about. But I did get the gist of it, and the gist was the Indian reservation wasn’t good news.
Literally the minute I crossed over the border of
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as people say. I will warn you though, watch out for the guys wearing all red. There’s been quite a few murders out there recently, it’s pretty bad. I live in
And so I started walking down that lonely desert road into
The largest noticeable change upon entering the reservation was certainly not the landscape (it
I walked into
I honestly wasn’t expecting this kind of sight until the very bowels of the south. I tipped-toed as carefully as I could to the bathroom, and then proceeded to make an ungraceful exit (knocking over a display). As a walked out of town I got some rocks thrown at me, but hell, I had it worse in high school.
I camped out about halfway across, in the sweetest camping spot on earth. I can’t recall now what made it so completely stirring, but whatever it was it inspired me enough to take pictures.
I woke up the next morning and set out for Bylas. A good 21 miles away, I arrived in town a limping, exhausted fool. I was to tired at that point to care if it might be dangerous. As soon as that sign appeared proclaiming “now entering Bylas” appeared however, things changed.
The first thing that would probably bother anyone upon entering Bylas is the fact you have to walk over about a half mile of broken glass. No, seriously, the route into town is paved with broken beer bottles. It took me a hour to get though it without cutting my feet, and needless to say the fact it was there didn’t exactly raise my spirits about what awaited me in Bylas. The town itself was like some kind of quasi-third world Bulgarian nightmare (for those of you who have been to the nastier parts of
One of the nicer homes in Bylas
So here’s the deal. Just before I came to
So back to
So alas, if I had a team supporting me I could have walked it- but much like most of my life I was all on my own here. So I hitchhiked it out of there to Pheonix, a good 150 mile cheat. I will say considering I spent nearly a month going south down the California coast when I could have been going strait east more then makes up for it. So I consider my conscience clean.
And thus I arrived in Avondale (suburb of
Anyway, these two guys sat opposite each other playing crazy jigs while doing shots, and I ate up every second of it. Also hilarious was they would not ever give up on trying to get someone to flash them, and when a woman finally up and did they wouldn’t let up on her for the rest of the night. I nearly coughed up my beer laughing when-mid song-both of them stopped playing with the suddenness of a car crash and demanded she sit back down (she had been getting up to go to the bathroom, or perhaps escape)
This was the only picture from the night, a good representation of my level of sobriety
But soon enough I had to leave
I camped out in the desert a good 3 or 4 days on my way to Globe, and it’s funny. I wouldn’t consider myself a very spiritual guy, but there are sights to be seen there that get into your soul. That sunsets especially, I can’t imagine many things more beautiful. It’s as if the sky is on fire and the clouds glow like embers. A nice prelude to the horror or the freezing desert night to come….my god it’s cold camping in the desert.
My host there were real “mining town folk” I.E covered in tattoos and riding dirt bikes. A true moment of gluttony occurred when-sitting on their couch- I think I consumed about 5 hot pockets in a row. Man, I was hungry though. Water and crackers for 5 days will do that to you. I sat there wallowing in the afterglow of those sweet, sweet hot pockets for about 30 minutes. Mmmm to be traveling again, only after crawling through the desert do they taste so sweet.
“That’s a great horn,” I said. He pulled it out from under his arm and played a long note. It sounded like something out the swiss alps. Then he spoke.
“What are you up to my friend?” Says he
“I’m trying to walk across the
“Do you know who I am?” He asked
“No”
“I am a prophet my friend.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this one. He went on.
“When you leave from
“Well Actually, I think I’m going to go up though the
“When you go though
And he walked off. This was also the moment I decided I had to get a camera, which I did just before leaving LA.
LA was a gorgeous blast. I spent a good 2 or 3 days hanging in a crazy local artists house by the name of ZOSO, He toured me around LA and chatted about the local underground art theme. He had an extreamly unique style which I could only coin as “sleepy Quasimoto” Heres a little exaple, a “self portrait of his”
Check out his website here: http://zoso1.com/ Also talked about a great deal was his –and now my- art idol, a shy Japanese girl by the name of Audrey Kawasaki. She did these bizarre wispy anime-like girls drawn in wood. I’ll always laugh at the immortal words of Zoso: “I want to fuck her paintings”
Another highlight was him and his friends driving me out to that place where they filmed the race scene in “Grease” in the pitch black of 3am. I sat there on the concrete and looked up and the stars for a good hour, wallowing in that beautiful feeling that only comes from traveling again..ahh to travel. The Nomad spirit is in me!
So now we enter the dangers of Date Rape In
Plam Springs, Beautiful aint it?
Well, no, not really, but it was a bizarre incident. So I arrived in
Within 5 minutes of meeting him 2 things became very apparent:
*Now, I should explain here that I am not a crazy-anti-homo-gun-toting-religious-zealot. In fact, I’ve had many gay friends, one of my favorite uncles in gay. I live very close to San Fancisco, and I’ve attended at least 6 or 7 gay pride parades world wide (Go Madrid!) This does not, however, make me gay.
Now, I should explain here that my reasoning behind number 2 first started developing in his car when he started to do this little “oh you” and grab me somewhere every time I told a joke. Normally I wouldn’t take much notice to this except I realized I did the same thing back in the day with girls I liked. Actually, I can keenly remember the first time this happened to me on a train to
Now then, as we drove back to his house so I could drop my bag off and take a shower, he suggested we hit the bars. It sounded like a good plan to me, he was my host after all and it’s not like he had crossed a line or anything. So we made our way to town down
It was sometime on the ride over there he started talking about why he lived in
“There’s a Marine base here man, I love marines, they’ll do anything for a few bucks-I got some staying over tomorrow in fact”
I told him what a shame it was he was just stuck with me for the night. He laughed and pinched my cheek. I started wondering where I was going to have to draw the line. So far however I was committed to having a good time.
We arrived at the first bar, can’t remember the name. This was clearly not a middle
Man, was I into it. I sat back and sang along as loud as I could when she would break out with “Respect” and drunkenly mumbled to the verses I didn’t know to Fergies “Glamourous” only to come back screaming “IF YOU AINT GOT NO MONEY TAKE YOUR BROKE ASS HOME” during the melody.
We returned to his house some hours later, fairly good and liquored up. I decided the best solution here was a quit exit. I told him I was going to call it an early night. I’m not going to go into detail the next hour here, I’ll only say that I was sober enough to see though his kind of sad attempts at seduction, specifically because they reminded me so much of my own idiot drunken feats before I knew any better. But he just didn’t get it, sometime after the perhaps 5th polite but clear statement that “you just need to let this go man” the straw that finally broke the camels back was when he started drunkenly offering to pay me to masturbate in front of him. I said a polite good night, walked over to my room, and locked the door.
I sat there in my room for a while, pondering if he was drunk enough to try to stumble into my room during the wee hours of the morning. I wasn’t worried about a fight, I was fairly sure I could physically overpower him if it came to it and his personality didn’t seem to be prone to violence. All in all I doubted he would try to come in even if he couldn’t seem to take a hint. Never the less I propped my bag up on the door to give me some warning, jumped into my night clothes and went to sleep.
In the morning all was well, he looked a bit sleepy and sorry and we said our farewells. As I walked out of
I limped into
I spent the better part of that hour thinking of every excuse that would bring me back. I'd told everyone I was going, how could I pussy out here and save face? In the end I was pretty sure a broken leg was going to be the only thing I could do that would buy a bit of sympathy for failing. I wasn't quite ready to do that however. So I did the next best thing, called mommy and daddy and whined about how much my feet hurt. I guess sometimes having a totally irrational asshole for a father comes in handy here. He basically said if I didn't take the bus home I wasn't welcome back in his house. It was about an hour drive from
Glen and roomate, those crazy cards
Glen was totally down to earth, had a great car and a really nice apartment. This was the sweet life he was living. I mean, the guy cooks tri-tip for dinner. I almost cried, Tri-tip used to be a once a year thing to savor. And he made a suggestion, "Why not stay here another day and rest?" I took him up on it. And thats how I spent the next day shantying around
And so that was the true beginning. Sure my feet hurt, and yes, I still am getting blisters 3 (now a month and a half) weeks later. I figured out the key though, I just have to get blisters on every part of my feet and can possibly get blisters, and then, finally, I shall be so calloused and scared up my feet will just say "enough" and stop giving me them.
So I hobbled down highway 1 from San Fran. There were tons of highlights that I simply can't be bothered to write down. I did indeed meet a whole host of crazy cards and normal ned's.
Some highlights here: I met a 36 year old flight attendant "couger" (kudos to those who knows what that means) who only jumped on boys who were left handed. Seriously you heard me there, her entire dating scheme was that they had to be left handed-and pretty much nothing else. I met a crazy girl who put rotten fishes in her roommates bed, caused their dorm room to be evacuated and eventually got kicked off the campus. I felt bad though, she had a sweet soul and deserves better. Just lay off the revenge ange!
I did indeed spend 4 days camping out going between
At last but not least, I did hitchhike the last 15 miles with some hippies to
