Journals: 2004(1)

by Ric Carter

PROFESSIONAL-GRADE JOURNAL
Extra Sturdy for Heavy-Duty Use
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  • NOTES: transcribed
    Holidaze in Joisy
    January Jubilee
    MidMonth & Beyond
    Ever Onwards, etc
    February Letters
    Beware Feb's Ides
  • THEMES: lyrics
    17 Mindless Pleasures

    • The Road To Turdistan
  • GALLERIES: images
    The IVs
    The Mall
    MiniMallDaze


  • JOURNALS index
  • SouthWest Slide
  • Go2 Newsletter
  • SkeptiLog: Sightings
  • Ridge Rat News
  • River Rat News
  • Desert Rat News
  • Eat It! Food News

    • (Note: click all images)



    SEVENTEEN MINDLESS PLEASURES

    [chorus:]
    She's wrapped up in seventeen mindless pleasures
    She's wrapped up in seventeen mindless pleasures
    -
    She wakes up in a tangle of arms and legs
    She microwaves low-fat sausage and eggs
    She watches the sunrise over the lakes
    [insturmental line] [chorus]


    ON THE ROAD TO TURDISTAN

    Lotsa hungry bodies
    Lotsa naked bodies
    Lotsa smoking bodies
    On the road to Turdistan
    On the road to Turdistan


    January Jubilee

    NEW YEARS DAZE IN JOISY: click here

    (The first few days were minor, but the scenes of the flight back are worthy. The rest of the year had better not be anything like this.)

    Thursday 8 January, finally home

    Back from the East and just in time, just ahead of the killer cold snap, just beyond the reach of icy doom. Yet the adventure continues. Click on the Joisy notes link above. If you dare.

    sun+snow SAT 10: To Roseville (2 hrs each way) for a medical moment etc
    SUN 11: Lie about home in near-utter exhaustion
    MON 12: To Novato (3 hrs each way) for a medical midday etc
    TUE 13: Lie about home in near-utter exhaustion
    WED 14: To Sacratomato (2 hrs each way) for biopsy and counseling, with pouring rain and gusting winds etc
    THU 15: To Lake Tahoe (2 hrs each way) for attitude adjustment
    FRI 16: To Jackson and Ione for the usual, with photo side-trip
    SAT 17: Lie about home in near-utter exhaustion
    SUN 18: Lie about home, puttering and sputtering

    MidMonth & Beyond

    Sun 18 Jan 2004: At home, plotting our getaway.

    Now we're driving several hours every couple days for various medical insults - hopefully we'll get some final word about health and fitness soon - and then the journey begins. Our tentative plan:

    last resort Outfit and refit the RV during the first week of February, then hit the road. [Added: A shakedown run along the Mother Lode route.] Over towards the coast and head south along the Mission Trail, all the way. Then wander eastward along border regions for a couple months, eventually to the Gulf Coast. Then jog up across Texas to the Ouachitas and Ozarks to watch'em bloom. Then back westward to Amador County by the beginning of June. Remain a month for medical and family stuff. Then plot a new course.

    That's the gist of it. The strategy: go places that are not too cold, not too hot, not too expensive, not too infested by ETs (OK, so we'll be in Roswell, but just briefly) and not too too boring.

    Latest Guate updates:

    VoIP on the road in Guatemala
    and Maya-Archaeology.Org and
    Guatemalan Embassy to the USA

    Mon 19 Jan 2004: Back home, watching the trees.

    Called Toshiba this morning about the keyboard on Goliath, the huge new laptop. After two months use, typing normally, a key broke off. Toshiba sez their warranty doesn't cover keys. moody So I either try to glue it together, or spend $200 to replace the keyboard, or offload everything and return the sucker to CostCo, swap it for another. Cost them more. Serve them right.

    Downhill to Jackson today for the usual, but it's sunny above and cloudy underneath. A good day for posterized misty pictures of dripping trees etc looming in the fog. Then return home up a side ridge, past pastures of cattle, goats, horses, llamas, all moist and fluffy. Then a side trip to a high overview where we see THE CLOUDS BELOW, THE SNOW ABOVE. Yeah.

    In Jackson we scored a couple used DVDs, Fellini's ROMA and JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. For all the classic cinema I've seen, I think I missed these - although I may have seen ROMA whilst wasted in Petaluma. Ah, Nina Rota music, bright colors, psychedelic garlic, fabulosa! I wanna go back to Amalfi, pronto! With Vespas!

    MORE TRIP PLANNING


    Places we want to bag along the way include: old towns, missions, botanic gardens, k0k0peli SouthWest museums, grand vistas, pueblos, alien sites, big rocks, playas, observatories, railroad yards, herpetaria, canyons, labyrinths, petroglyphs and craters.

    So the general schedule will be to drive a few miles to the next point of interest, park the RV, walk and bike around for a day or two to see thangs, lie around a bit, then drive a few miles to the next point of interest. When the monthly gas budget is exceeded, stop and stay longer. Repeat as needed for four months.

    MON 19: To Jackson (1/2 hr each way) for usual med/shop stuff
    TUE 20: Visit Bobbie, fix light; to Jackson for hardware
    WED 21: home, exhausted, regrouping; Maureen to Jackson
    THU 22: to Roseville (2 hr each way) for more med stuff
    FRI 23: to Folsom (1.5 hr each way) for more med stuff
    SAT 24: home, exhausted, regrouping, computing, researching

    Ever Onwards

    Saturday 24 January, at home late

    These days of return to California have been as tiring as the worst of our old workaday commutes, but with much more driving, rolling no coffee to fuel the mileage, no wine to wash down the nights. But we think we're only a couple weeks away from escaping.

    Most days, we throw warm clothes and cold electronics into the Explorer and drive up our rutted rocky road under leaning conifers past mountain shrubs and a couple other houses out to the pavement, down through more evergreens and well-insulated backwoods bungalows to the scenic highway at the edge of our hamlet. We cruise the verge of a narrow valley, the rise of our ridge to the right, meadows and clearings and the next ridge to the left, a thin scattering of buildings and the cemetary and deserted mill site, our road until we reach the school and groves and post office and the shabby shops that mark our village center.

    Maybe we check our post office box. Very occasionally, if we have time and hunger, we stop at the German bruncher for schnitzels or apfelkuchen or whatever with hot tea, served under smiling colorful figurines of faux-Dresden porcelain and woodsy carvings. Then it's a dash down the mountain, around serpentine curves and swerving tourists, more woods and villages and microranches until we've descended to Jackson the county seat, the old Mother Lode treasure house.

    Usually I branch onto the old wagon road at the edge of town, up the steep drive to the newish medical condos, drop Maureen at the Jackson HOUSE OF PAIN for her physical therapy and gym sessions. heart of Jackson Then I'll meander under deciduous icons past Gold Rush cottages and newer shops, bounded by hills once fabulously rich and covered with miners' shacks, into old downtown Jackson, all two narrow steep blocks of it, just a thin block from the highway bypass. It's always worth walking up the rippling sidewalks, looking in the shop windows overhung by awnings or balconies or facades of brick or wood or cast iron.

    (GOLD RUSH TOWNS: I'm most partial to the local burgs - Volcano is the best Mother Lode hamlet to walk thru briefly, Moke Hill is a little bigger and livelier and almost as quaint, Jackson is the best LIVING small Gold Rush town IMHO. All the rest are disappointing - Angels Camp and Nevada City are too trafficked, Sutter Creek and Murphys are too cute, Placerville and Auburn are too jammed.)

    soul of Jackson Sometimes I'll do a round of shopping - WalMart and Dollar Tree over the hill in Martel,Safeway downstream from downtown, Longs and Grand Auto off towards French Bar. Sometimes I'll stomp up the steep block from Main Street to the WPA art-deco courthouse guarded by Catholic and Lutheran spires, all overlooking the former line of bordellos in the gulch. I might walk around the tiny irregular tree-crowded block with the old mini-mansion housing the county museum, go past the re-created horseless-carriage garage and the shed-sheltered steam loco, and stumble down another steep block to the other end of downtown.

    History is petrified imagination. —Arthur "Bugs" Baer

    But sometimes time is tight and we just twist along the rolling foothills thru the ever-shrinking villages crossing of Sutter Hill, Sutter Creek, Amador City, Drytown, past mines and fields and groves and gullies til we ht the edge of the Great Central Valley and go rocketing towards Sacratomato.

    Most often we're not going towards the state capitol itself but to its eastern-most outliers of Folsom and Roseville, jumping-off points where major highways start climbing over the Sierras. Each city has its more-or-less quaint core, now surrounded immeasurably by vast suburban sprawl intermeshed with asphalt grids.

    The road to Folsom is another twisty rural track, pines and oaks and cows and canyons, vineyards more common than villages. hospitality The over-arching hills hide surprising residential estates so the traffic is usually brisk and too thick. It's a scary route when returning tired in the dark, as happens too many days.

    The road to Roseville is flatter and faster and much more crowded, approaching impassability all too often. The housing tracts and shopping centers and junkyards and wastewater plants grow ever outward, traffic arteries are always under reconstruction, the air is always either too hot and too thick or too cold and too thick.

    But Folsom and Roseville host the nearest Kaiser medical facilities and the nearest plethora of affordable stores - our current necessities. So we drive for hours, transact our medical transactions, Rancho Seco nukes grab a hopefully healthy lunch, transact our commercial transactions, then drive for hours back homeward. It always takes all day.

    But not for much longer. The cardiologist wants me to do a tilt-table test, hopefully in the next couple weeks, but I can call in for the results. Maureen has just another couple weeks of physical therapy sessions, and sees her worthless VocRehab 'counselor' once more next week. So after next weekend (probably) we'll start loading up the RV for a four-month jaunt - traveling, not just touring - shaking our legs on the nomad trail - marching into the next phase of life. At least, that's the current fantasy.

    Them who can, do; them who can't counsel. —Anon.

    Sunday 25 January, at home late

    The other long drive we won't miss: those long hauls to Novato. Down the mountain to Jackson, coming home across rolling Central Valley hinterlands and farmlands and rivers and suburbs to the SF Bay Area, then often back thru the East Bay metropolis and the long return in darkness. Shit shit shit shit.

    Today we ignore all that. I'll be homebound the next few days so we took a slow drive down the mountain south of our usual routes, along the ridges and crests overlooking the Moke River valley with snowy peaks in the distance and fluffy clouds overhead. We brush the edge of Jackson and take the old Middle Bar track down the Moke to the old gold cornucopia of Paloma / Fosteria, now a clot of clusters of less-than-spiffy shacks. Then back homeward.

    MORE TRIP PLANNING: Click Here



    February Letters


    What better way to start off a new month than by sending some emails confessing my weakness and disappointment to my beloved sister whom I haven't seen for a few years?


    From: "Ric Carter" [ric@sonic.net]
    To: "Marsha Carter" [dzuki@pe.net]
    Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 5:58 AM
    Subject: Hapy hapy bday bday

    Marsha:

    OK so I like remembered around midnite Sunday that YOUR DAY was fast approaching and that I'd screwed the pooch and not mailed anything in time so I frantically found something almost funny yesterday and wrote a lame excuse in it and mailed it at the Post Office on the way downhill this afternoon but that was before the cat dumped on me from both ends while being taken to the cat-dentist and then I started feeling sick (head cold) and even though I got the call that the LAST HEART TEST would probably be scheduled for next week and we could finally leave, I know that I'll be sick all this week and won't be able to load up the RV and anyway it started snowing heavily and may continue (good thing we went over the Sierras to Carson City and returned on Sunday before the highway was closed by an avalanche) so it'll probably be too cold for me to rebuild our bikes to load on the RV and roll away our fat layers and anyway Maureen invited the local family over for a Valentine's Day dinner on the 13th (we gotta get rid of that last frozen turkey) so we won't actually get away until mid-Feb but who knows, we might be down to visit ya around the end of the month or maybe a little before, I'll be sure to take the cellphone and warn ya before we show up and I promise not to write any more emails with really long sentences.

    --Ric



    From: "Ric Carter" [ric@sonic.net]
    To: "Marsha Carter" [dzuki@pe.net]
    Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 7:19 AM
    Subject: post-bday update

    Dear healthy sister:

    We went to potluck dinners on Friday and Saturday, pleasant enough, and nobody SEEMED infectious; but Monday night the cold symptoms appeared and now I'm just a snot- nosed kid, hacking and gagging etc. And it snowed continuously on Monday and Tuesday, we're blanketed and frigid now. And we just got word of necessary appointments in Sacratomato next week and maybe the following two weeks too. THEN we can probably actually really get away. Might see y'all in early March, maybe. Our scheduled journey is now 3.5 months... but who knows what'll happen next?

    My favorite slogan painted on the cab of a Guatemalan truck:
    * MI DESTINO ES VIAJAR * (chanted: mi des-TI-no es vi-A-jar)

    [hack][sneeze][cough][snort]
    Damn, I'm just so entertaining... Ah well, yr belated b'day card should arrive soon, and the snow should eventually melt, and I should eventually be ambulatory, and the RV shouldn't need any repair work, and I'm writing shorter sentences.

    Your diseased brother


    Wed 4 Feb 2004, at home early

    It's been very unsettled the last few days.

    Friday we did Jackson, then to Amador Newcomers' potluck, pleasant gathering in a grand log cabin.

    Saturday we lazed, then went to Volcano Theatre awards potluck, 60s LAUGH-IN theme, fun but LOUD!

    Sunday we crossed the Sierras to magnetic Carson City, overwatch poked our way up Voltaire Canyon to high vantages over­look­ing vast expanses of snowy desert and mountains and town and sky. Snow in the sagebrush and sand and slopes, to the horizon. Returned thru the pass in thick flurries, just barely in time.

    Monday it hailed, then snowed. We did Jackson for PT and drove Petrushka to the Cat Dentist - she barfed and shat en route. Returning, I felt the onset of a bad head cold. Just what I focking need right now.

    Tuesday it snowed continuously and I was too sick to go anywhere, we'll do the next Folsom run another time. Maureen took Petrushka in for oral surgery and returned for a vocational rehab consult (which went well). All night we had a stoned cat staggering around.

    Today after midnight I looked out on our snowy landscape under the full moon, bright as a cold-fusion fart. Now early morning, everything is frozen stiff with icy clarity.

    Meanwhile I've been buying and selling on eBay, offing stuff we'll never use again, getting a few last-minute artifacts for our journeys. crossroads And I've done some minimal InfraRed photography, now I need to try some UltraViolet. And I've been sleeping a lot, coughing raspily, machine-gun sneezing, constant nasal drip-drip-drip. Sick sucks. Between sickness and weather and delayed medical / VocRehab appts, it looks like we won't get away until the end of the month. Bother.

    Fri 6 Feb 2004, at home VERY early

    YESTERDAY we laid around the house, then went to the PO for a package from Hong Kong (spy camera); I sold some stuff on eBay and packed it up, half is going to England. I'm a goddam international merchant already.

    calling home NOW the snow still lies thick around us, as does my congestion [gratuitous snot jokes deleted]. And now the full moon glares down like an angry fluorescent icecube in a freezer emptied of Buffalo Wings. Or something.

    LATER we cruised down to Jackson for PT and shipping, I'm still too sick to be more than a slug. Glub blug. So I sit in a parking lot shooting pictures out the car window. (See the Mini­Mall­Daze gallery.) And await recuperation. And dream of doing photography (and other stuff) while actually moving around, not feverish. It could happen someday. Eventually. This century. Maybe.

    AND it's time to start a travel journal, I've got too much material to insert here, but what to CALL it? SPRING FEVER '04 maybe, or THE GREAT ESCAPE maybe, or SOUTHWEST SLIDE. Whatever. The road beakons ever onward. Oh, and I need a graphic too. Of course when we're travelling, these journal entries will be on hiatus.

    SAT 7: Laid around computing or something
    SUN 8: Laid around recuperating or something
    MON 9: To Folsom (1.5 hrs each way) for medical stuff etc
    TUE 10: Laid around whilst Maureen does Jackson
    WED 11: To Roseville (2 hrs each way) for medical stuff etc
    THU 12: Laid around whilst Maureen does Jackson

    Thur 12 Feb 2004, at home midday

    Lincoln's Birthday: Slowly kicking the cold, feel almost human today. I'd go out with cameras and IR filters but there are no clouds, not enough drama. from Roseville Bother. And just when I'm not doing anything else. For being sick, I've done too much of the retirement commute - but not as much as Maureen.

    Ah but yesterday was The Last Heart Test, a trip to Roseville for the Whirl-A-Tilt, er I mean the Tilt-Table Test. I passed, so we're thru with medical stuff until Maureen's thyroid updates in July. She has to deal with some local Workers Comp / Disability meetings, then we're GONE. Time to load the RV. Might leave by the end of next week. Hot damn.

    Beware The Ides Of Feb

    Tue 17 Feb 2004: At home, early early early.

    We have a tentative schedule. We got medical clearance last Thursday; I restarted the elist on Friday; we considered and provisioned on Saturday; at Beth's we made plans for a week hence on Sunday; so we're leaving next Monday. Or Tuesday. Probably.

    I seem to recall a trip to Jackson on Saturday for gear and air, and we definately bought a new computer on Thursday - GARGANTUA, another huge Toshiba P25 to replace young GOLIATH of the broken key, which shall be returned. GARGANTUA sports a DVD burner, so in the space of a couple months we've gone from zero to three. And Workers Comp might buy Maureen another computer, or that one, or something, to further her nacent career as a Travel Writer (dependent on voice transcription software since she can't write or type more than 10 minutes per day). Awash in hardware...

    Aunt Ginny The mountain relatives here have a tradition of exchanging Valentine gifts. Thus when we returned Saturday we found baskets on our porch. We now have both finch and squirrel feeders to set out in our last week here. On Sunday we made our own rounds but only the invalids were home. Ginny looks so frail. Beth looks so whomped after having 5 molars ripped from her mouth. But she told us a local eatery was voted Best Chinese Food in the county. So there we were.

    I thought I'd play Travel Writer and pen a brief review of our abbreviated lunch. Just practicing, eh?
    Lunch: Le's Chinese Restaurant (26638 Hwy 88 at Tiger Creek, Buckhorn Village, Pioneer CA 95666 - 209.295.7000) has endured ownership changes these last few years but with just one cook, who now runs the place with his wife. Their little girl, cute as a PowerPuff mushroom, click for more looks to be around four now, growing up in this rustic mountain oriental cafe attached to a rough redneck bar. The cedar-fired woodstove air is as cozy as ever, and the food has improved from a slump a couple years back (that we recall). Seven years ago a holiday blizzard smashed our festive plans - no electricity to bake turkeys etc - but after the roads were plowed our large family contingent rushed in here for XMas dinner. The honey-almond prawns had a better sauce then (or were we hungrier?) but the prawns themselves are still wonderful. Now our mushu vegetables were fresher and crisper than we'd anticipated. And I love that hearty tea. All very tasty. We'll return in a few days for combo dinners and further evaluation.
    We'll probably also try a few other County eateries before we evacuate; stay tuned for my next report.

    Monday morning we awoke to pounding howling insane murderous rain. Our newly-formed front yard was eroding before our very eyes. I grabbed a shovel, trenched and terraced in the virulent epoxy mud til the rivers ran crossways instead of downhill. cloudy Jackson Then I crawled back inside, collapsed awhile, then crab-walked over to the computers and started the inter-Toshiba brain transplant (porting all the warez from the old to the new).

    All of a sudden the DRSB activity shot up! Messages, images, contacts! Now I have more to do than I can maybe fit into this last week. Bother. And I haven't even baked the final lasagne yet, emptying the larder. Nor have I shot photos in black light. Is there time?

    Tues 17 Feb: Baked the lasagne. Watched the rain.
    Wed 18 Feb: To Jackson for auto work and shopping.

    dance recital Thurs 19 Feb: Galumphed thru the day. Expanded DRSB / HOFC site, added many film images. Then back to Le's for chow. Then down to Sutter Creek for Kittra's dance class recital (THE WINTER DANCE SHOW 2004), splendid high school entertainment, only a couple dancers had no idea what they were doing. Snapped many shots.
    Dinner: Le's Chinese Restaurant for Combo Dinner B: almond chicken (many veggies) and sweet-sour chicken, both fine. Tasty wonton soup, nice crab puffs, other hot delectibles (I forget now), everything tasty. Veggies crisp, fresh, lighty cooked, delicious. Superior road food.

    gobble gobble Fri 20 Feb: Maureen starts cooking. Whew.
    Sat 21 Feb: Maureen cooks more. Get ready.

    Sun 22 Feb: Maureen cooks more. Beth and Brad and the Abuelitas arrive. We devour Maureen's superb (President's Day) turkey dinner. Many ideas are discussed. Petrushka performs as usual. Tryptophan kicks in, ZZzzzz...

    Mon 23 Feb 2004: At home, early.

    Still no resolution with Cuz Gary's. Damn. Gotta call'em as soon as I'm awake. When will we ever get out of here? It's becoming apparent that midday Tuesday is NOT a realistic takeoff. dance recital And the Mother Lode run is probably problematic. Damn winter.

    Meanwhile, I've been thinking about writing songs with themes of: radioactive mutant offspring (esp. daughters) of (movie or horror or parasite or biblical) monsters; paradise; cosmetics; suburban murder; neurological diseases; storms and environmental disasters; etc. And write short stories that could be screenplays. The ideas are bubbling up.

    LATER: CuzGary's sez they'll have someone here early Wednesday, to do the petty work and assess the major stuff. I'll believe it when I see it. Meanwhile we did the usual in Jackson. Meanwhile we still don't know when we're leaving. Meanwhile I'm prepping the old GOLIATH for a return - wiping its brain, etc.

    Thurs 26 Feb 2004: At home, midday.

    snowy tree Snowing snowing snowing. Heavily. Hopefully it'll be melted by next Tuesday, our latest takeoff date. Why then? 'Cause the CuzGary guy didn't make it yesterday (breakdown) and they can't get around to anything until after we leave AKA after we return. So after the next trash pickup, we're GONE. That's the current fantasy...

    Meanwhile it turns out that we're past the return date of GOLIATH so I have to wipe GARGANTUA's brain and return it. Maybe tomorrow. To Folsom or Sacramento. Thru the snow. Shit, this brainwiping and transplantation routine is getting tedious. TEDIOUS!

    NOTE to newbies: GOLIATH and GARGANTUA are huge Toshiba P25 semi-'portable' computers. A key broke off GOLIATH. Key's aren't covered under warranty. I got GARGANTUA hoping to take GOLIATH back to CostCo, but I waited too long. It's all my fault.

    dance recital LATER: More and more snow. Don't think we'll go anywhere tomorrow. Maureen visits her mother to plan the Switzerland trip; I stay home abusing digital images and awaiting her safe return; the snowload increases. Snow demons dance around in the flurries like maddened cockroaches on a hotplate. Sounds swell from the skies, are absorbed by the powder.

    Fri 27 Feb 2004: At home, late.

    Shit shit shit shit shit. Financial stuff will keep us here another couple weeks probably. in the road New target take-off date is 10 March. That'll give us just three months on the road. Shit shit shit shit shit. I am getting so like TIRED of this. But it's necessary. Which doesn't make it any better, mood-wise. If I were still drinking I'd have a drink now.

    Oh, maybe we can get away for a few days in between now and the 10th. Maybe even do the northern part of the trip, Sonoma thru San Jose or something. We just need the fickle finger of fate to nudge us on our way. Floom. 

    BLOOD ON THE SADDLE
    traditional?
    
There's blood on the saddle and blood on the ground,
And a great great big puddle of blood all around;
A cowboy lay in it all covered with gore
And he never will ride any broncos no more.

Oh, pity the cowboy all gory and red,
A bronco fell on him and bashed in his head.
There was blood on the saddle and blood on the ground,
A great big puddle of blood all around.
    heading for sunshine

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