Monday August 7, 2000

Pictures

Holy shit. Day 33. Over a month on the road. A whole month of driving, of traveling. Sleeping in my car, in my tent, rarely more than a night in the same place. A true vagrant’s life. I’ve lived this life for an entire month. Incredible. This trip and these experiences are a treasure in my life. I almost have a feeling that people who have never lived through something like this lead a somewhat emptier, shallower existence. This is what life is about, this is sucking the marrow out of life. This is the high definition, picture-in-picture surround sound under 48’’ not admitted roller-coaster ride free fall while having sex in Times Square way to enjoy life. This is living as truly and purposely as there is in this age. I have loved every minute and am determined not to close this road of life. I will drive down this road again.

This, the 33rd day, is my last. And this is the final chapter in a divine epic that will rule my mind forever more. I have not missed a day, every bit of adventure and wonder are in these pages. This, my videos, my pictures, and my letters will provide an extensive history and thoroughly tell this tale of my trip.

This all important day began on a very sour note. I had agreed to take Daniel to Chicago so he could see Susan and then from there he could get to Racine, WI. I shouldn’t have agreed, but I’m not the best at turning people down. Right away once we said our goodbyes and got in the car Daniel was an asshole. Everything I said Daniel made an issue of and snapped at me. He condemned me for stealing the sign yesterday. I of course didn’t respond I just sat there and drove. I did tell him to quit snapping at me. Then he started reading a copy of Oblivion that Matthew gave him and Daniel was getting extremely upset over it. He was absolutely screaming in my car about society and this country. Even though he wasn’t doing anything against me he was still so agitated I didn’t say anything to him for most of the way to Chicago. He just kept ranting & raving. He frightened me a bit.

After a while of that we reached Chicago. And after a bit of looking we found the library that Susan worked at. I went and chalked some of Chicago while Daniel was packing up his bag. Luckily he had calmed down by now. We walked into the library and found our way to Susan’s office. I was rather anxious to get home so I didn’t stay long with Susan. I pretty much just said hello and then took off.

On my way to the car I chalked some more and Daniel caught up to me. Since he had an hour or two to kill until Susan got out of work he went to wander around Chicago. We chalked until we got to the car and then I took off.

Then it was the familiar drive from Chicago back home. It wasn’t a very long drive but since this was the final leg of the trip it took on a special significance. Just a few more miles and the greatest epic of my life would be over. It was a surreal feeling when I finally entered back into Michigan. It was always a special treat to spot a Michigan license plate while on the road and now they were everywhere. It was bizarre.

As I got closer I called to check in. Every part of home seemed strange when I came across it. When I turned on KLQ again, when I started seeing city names I knew and recognizing places. I had been traveling for a long time and while I didn’t really miss home or my parents at all, I was beginning to get a bit weary from the road. I needed to rest, I needed a break from this trip. So I wasn’t entirely anxious to get home but I was just sitting back and reflecting on the incredible feat and the amazing trip I had just completed. I wasn’t sorry it was over nor was I glad. I just had a serene feeling of contentment and pride over what I did and accomplished. Things have their order and place. Now it was time to go home and rest. I accepted and welcomed it.

I admit I was a bit excited to be back, but in the context of a conclusion to my trip. I guess I was expecting a hero’s welcome, like I was coming home from war and everyone in the city would be welcoming me back. Of course it didn’t’ happen, but I felt like they were all glad to see THABOAT again and were all silently praising its’ return. I saw my neighbor across the street first when I pulled into the driveway. I got a welcome though not an excessive one. Then I went in side and I got a hero’s welcome from Ozzy and a bit subdued one from my mother. I sat and talked with her for a bit, told her some about my trip. But I was anxious to call Jackie so I left my mom to finish cooking and I called my baby.

We didn’t talk for very long because after another 30 min or so dinner was ready. I ate with my parents and actually sat and talked with them. After dinner I finished unpacking and then I got online. When I got on AIM and ICQ & whatnot then I got the kind of welcome I was looking for. Everyone was online and talking to me at once. Friends from AU, NYRA members, and various other YR people. I was great through hectic. With 7-8 people talking at once it was difficult to keep up and pay good attention to them all. I sidelined Jackie somewhat since I had called her and sent her lots of letters so she was caught up on my journey already. But I was damn busy talking to people, plus I was trying to go through my e-mail at the same time.

I forget how late I stayed up, but I was damn busy the whole time. There was so much youth rights stuff to catch up on, the idiot NYRA board did not do a single fucking thing when I was gone. I couldn’t believe they sat on their ass for an entire month. Shit, I was doing more YR work on the road then all of them did sitting at home with their computers handy. Damn!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 10:33 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Sunday August 6, 2000

Pictures

The original plan was that Matthew would take me paintballing on the Saturday when I first got there. I had even delayed the trip because he said Saturday was the day his friends went paintballing. Well, when I got there he didn’t have any paintballs and we couldn’t go. That pissed me off a bit, but Matthew said he would have it all ready when I passed back through. And this time he said the best day was a Sunday. So ok, I planned for today.

So today comes and I figure it is all set up, nope, Hew hasn’t done a damn thing. He doesn’t have any paintballs, and hasn’t really contacted anyone about the game. Grrr. It was supposed to be all ready! Grrr. So we spent several hours looking for paintballs. We drove an hour into Indiana to a store that was closed when the town 5 minutes away from Sheldon sold them… Grr.

Finally after a bit of bullshit and some expenditure on some damn expensive paintballs we were ready to go. All I had were shorts so Hew let me borrow his brother’s fatigues. I thought I looked damn cool in those. Long pants & a long shirt in green army fatigues, cool, hehe. I had Matthew’s mother take a few pictures of me wearing them with the mask on, my coon skin cap on and with me holding the gun.

We then headed out to the place we would play at. A farmer in the area (there were a lot of them) has a bit of land with an old farm house and barn, with several rows of hay. This is what we used.

We had a total of nine people, Daniel, another guy & I had never played before. The rest were pretty damn good. Three of them went to paintball tournaments and did really well in them. So I suppose it wasn’t the evenest teams for my first time out. That tournament team always won, even when it was 3 on 6. Darn. It was damn fun, I wish I did this more often. I did fairly well avoiding getting shot, though I couldn’t shoot for shit. I didn’t hit anyone all day. It wasn’t entirely my fault however, the guns Daniel & I were using older, crappier guns. Everyone had new, high powered guns but Dan & I had crap guns that didn’t shoot very far. So I had to fire up quite a ways and hope that it arced down and hit someone. Unfortunately it never did. They of course could pick me off whenever I wasn’t under cover. Oh well.. It was still lots of fun.

We played several games until we ran out of balls, air, and it started to rain. It didn’t really hurt much when getting hit, they warn you but I was mostly fine. The only time I got a bit hurt was in one game I was covering the right side of our side. Someone told me to watch the side so I assumed someone was trying to creep up on us. I peered around the corner of the hay stack and William was right there. A foot away. Pa-pa-pa I was shot, he got me in the bare arm. It stung, but wasn’t too bad. I put up my arms and started to walk off when pa-pa-pa my teammate behind me was shooting at William but instead shot me in the ass a few times. One hit me in the side, and that hurt. I’ve got a bruise there now.

Overall it was very fun and not very painful. We got done and hung out for a while at hew’s place. Playing video games & whatnot. Daniel was becoming a bigger & bigger prick. If I lost a game or was doing poorly he would go out of his way to rub my nose in it, and he would snap at me for stupid things. I got Matthew’s mother to look at the NYRA page, unfortunately a lot of it wasn’t working at the time so again, Daniel really shoved it back in my face. That rotten mutha-fucka.

A few of Hew’s friends came over and we hung out watching some murder movie with Nicolas Cage. I might have said this before but Matthew has some really cool friends. Just like my friends back hom, but as yet still uncorrupted by age. Like my friends before they pussed out and “grew up” now they are a bunch of wimps too afraid to have a good time.

After the movie five of us piled into this girl’s car determined to go steal a road sign. That was a hell of a lot of fun. Again just like back in the day. They let me keep the street sign, it made a dandy souvenir. Bryan while we were stopped took the pole and smashed a cable/electrical box as well. He said he did a hell of a lot of damage. Cool. Whole thing took less than 5 minutes and we were back on the road & back to Hew’s. I hit my head though.

We snuck the sign from her car to mine w/o Hew’s mom seeing then we sat out on the porch talking. What a fun bunch. Then we went inside and played Monopoly on the Nintendo. Bryan, Matthew, Daniel & I. Hew dropped, then Bryan. Daniel & I stayed up playing for another hour or two then I liquidated him! Hehe.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Saturday August 5, 2000

Pictures

This morning it started to thunder & start to rain, so I made Daniel get up so the tent wouldn’t get caught in the storm. We were able to get all packed up before the really heavy shit hit, but Daniel was still pissed off that I woke him up, thinking the rain would be no problem.

After breakfast we drove north to Navoo, IL which is a historical Mormon site. This city was where the Mormons originally lives and then were driven out so they went to Utah. Lots of buildings have been restored from when the Mormons were here and it is a big tourist spot (for Mormons). We went to the visitor’s center and watched a movie about the history of Navoo. Then we talked to a very cute Mormon chick. Talked about the religion and about youth rights. She was on a mission for the church and couldn’t use the Internet for the next year, but we gave her the addresses anyways.

After mackin’ on the church chick we took off to see some more of the city. We got a tour of some random building and it was rather boring. Then we went to see an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. That was interesting, taught me a little about what these things are, I’d like to read them one day. They sound interesting.

Another thing I’d like to read is the Book of Mormon. Just to see exactly what they believe. I filled out a card while there to get a free copy, I wanted them to mail it, but I fear they will send someone by in person to deliver it and to talk to me, but I don’t want to talk to anyone I just want the book. Grrr.

We stopped in downtown Navoo and we chalked that all up. Then we swung by the temple that was under construction. Back in the 1840’s when the Mormons were in Navoo the build a big temple, which was torn down when they left. Some prophecy of theirs predicts the end will follow the reconstruction of the temple, so they are rebuilding it now, probably to try and hurry the end along. Crazies… hehe

After seeing the temple and chalking the city up a bit we went back to Keokuk to see Larissa again. After briefly visiting with her & Tyler again we went off to Matt Hall’s. He of course was still asleep but we woke him up. We talked for a bit and I showed him the video of our fun experiences chalking in Keokuk. Larissa couldn’t stay however so soon it was just Matt, Daniel & I. Daniel was becoming more ASFAR partisan all the time which annoyed me since we were supposed to be working for NYRA and ASFAR at this point. So as he just talked about ASFAR I had to push NYRA to compensate so it ended up turning competitive once again. Daniel wanted Matt to print out a whole bunch of ASFAR pamphlets for us to hand out. They sat and struggled with the computer for a while and couldn’t print them out properly. Finally I urged them to just give up since we had to get going. After a brief and unfruitful attempt to get Matt to join us at the youth rights summit we said out good byes and left.

First however we stopped by a park down on the river which was a big hangout spot for young people in Keokuk. There we chalked extensively. We covered that place with YR slogans. Then we crossed back over the Mississippi and headed east to Sheldon. I just wanted to get going so I just drove through without stopping for adventures.

It was still light out when we got to Hew’s house. We had thought Matthew worked until 9 pm, but he was sitting there in the living room watching Starship Troopers. So Daniel was treated to a similar first impression of Matthew as I was. When I got there a month ago HEW and his friends were all sitting there watching End of Days. It was strange because when I got there Matthew came out to meet me, didn’t really say much at all then we went inside and he introduced me as “flaming homosexual” some good natured ribbing that Matthew & I had perfected in the time we’ve known each other online. Then after brief introductions and just a few words we all just sat and watched the movie. Kind of a strange way to stat my trip and meet my first people. But after the movie we all talked some and it wasn’t bad.

We talked a lot more this time though, so Daniel’s first impression of Matthew was a bit more hospitable than mine. Matthew’s mother got dinner for us, spaghetti, it was good, the sauce was sweet. When we got there we learned that the Youth Rights Summit was a no-go. Unfortunately Eric bailed on us, which means Aaron couldn’t go since he was counting on getting a ride from Eric. Grrr, that annoyed me. Pissed me off a bit too, except that I didn’t have too high hopes that Eric would show up. Eric is President of ASFAR and we have had many disputes in the past. I am a strong critic of Eric and would like to see him gone. Many others would like to see him gone as well but don’t really know how to get rid of him. Lacking a viable replacement I fear he may be there to stay.

Since there was no youth rights summit we just hung out with Matthew’s friends in Sheldon. We lit off some fire works down at memory lane (IN border) and we went to the ghost bridge to see if we could see some ghosts. We didn’t personally, but Matthew picked up some strange things with his camera. Blue orbs and streaks. One thing looked like a skull.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 11th, 2005 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Friday August 4, 2000

Pictures

Last night Daniel & I talked about a lot of things. I told him all about Jackie, the good & the bad, he talked about his girlfriends (Internet). We also talked a lot about youth rights fortunately. Both of us were sick of nothing being done so we decided that the next day or two before we got to the “Youth Rights Summit” we were going to do something.

We thought about protesting or doing anything else, but finally the idea to chalk was brought up. Since we don’t really have the means to operate a protest and since I don’t want to get arrested 2 days until the end of my trip we chose to get some sidewalk chalk and write some youth rights propaganda and advertisements all over the place.

So we stopped in a town in Missouri and bought some sidewalk chalk. And for the rest of the state of Missouri we would write YR slogans and the Internet addresses to NYRA and ASFAR. Every small town on our way with a business got chalked.

Sometimes the business owners got mad though. We stopped to fill up and I went to chalk the gas station. So right by the building I wrote some long message like, “Youth Deserve Rights www.youth-rights.org www.ASFAR.org” Then I walked back over to the pumps and started to write “NYRA” but the owner came out and started yelling at me. He was an old guy and was fucking pissed. He said I had to clean it up. So the idiot comes out with a bottle of 409 and a rag. Hehe, 409 isn’t going to clean chalk off of concrete, dumbass. So to extract a bit of revenge I clean it up by taking off the top and dumping half the bottle on the chalk. Wasting his bottle of 409, hehe. The guy then comes out and says “that was the dumbest thing I ever seen anyone do.” Hehe. Then he said I had to clean up the “soap”. But by this time I was finally done pumping so I went inside, left the money on the counter and left. But as a final act of defiance I scribbled a random mark on the ground as I was getting in the car. What was the funniest thing about this all was that he got all pissed about the “NYR..” but never saw the longer thing I wrote by the building, even though he walked past it several times. Hehehe. What an idiot. Hehe

We continued our path through northern Missouri chalking at every town we came to and finally we reached Keokuk. Larissa wanted us to stop by once more on the way back. She unfortunately couldn’t make it to the “summit” at Hew’s place. So Daniel & I stopped by.

She was at work when we reached Keokuk so we drove down to Shop-Ko where she worked. She was intent on her work & didn’t want to get in trouble for talking with us, so didn’t say much. But I bought some more sidewalk chalk (a lot more) and I went through her line. We had an hour till she got off, oh what could we do?… Chalk! Hehe.

We spent that entire hour covering the city of Keokuk with our youth rights message. Every business got chalked on main street. Supermarkets, restaurants, video stores, bars, and everything else. We split up to cover more ground. Then we stopped at a liquor store and we wrote our anti-drinking age slogan, “Draft age – 18; Drinking age – 21; Is this fair?” followed by the addresses. Daniel went to get the video camera. When we taped it the owner came out. He said a few things then dumped water all over our work. We got it all on tape. Then he said “get that fucking camera off of me” and came after Daniel with the bucket. I told him not to “hurt that damn camera” and I grabbed it away, he said something and I told him to fuck off. Whew, that was fun, got my adrenaline pumping. That asshole.

We chalked a little more, then we got over to Larissa’s house. We were able to take showers there, which was nice. Last shower was in Kansas at a truck stop. Larissa’s boyfriend Dustin was there so we finally got to meet him. He was quiet and Larissa got quiet when he was there too it seemed. We sat and watched the tape of Daniel & I chalking and getting yelled at by the liquor store guy. We sat and talked some more then went out to Burger King to get some dinner. That was when Larissa & Dustin found out Daniel was a vegetarian and I guess they don’t know too many. They thought he was weird.

Then at 8 Larissa had to be to her cousin’s house to babysit. We couldn’t stay the night but we could all come & hang out that evening. The only cousin of hers that we really saw was Tyler who was handicapped in a wheelchair. He was watching baseball and he knew a heck of a lot about sports. We talked sports, I thought he was cool as hell. We all sat around & talked until Larissa said it was time for everyone to leave. Daniel & I drove and found a rest stop right along the Mississippi.

We had planned to go see Matt Hall the following morning. Larissa said he normally sleeps in all day so we’d have to wait a bit.

I kept getting irked with Larissa. She is not nearly devoted enough to youth rights. She has the attitude that YR is her private belief and no one else should be burdened with it. YR is in no position to be thought of in that way, we need active recruiters.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 10:27 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.