Day 13

Day 13
Thursday March 13th
I spent the afternoon watching the sun set and chatting up the local color high above Ventuckey at Grant's Park. I bumped into a group of local sloppers who provided quite a laugh. Sloppers are folks who fly radio controlled gliders. Some of these guys can get pretty serious about it all. Some even show up dressed in full battle gear, camo and all! Unfortunately there was a rather inconsistent wind so the flying turned into grab ass and beer drinking. Not that there is anything wrong with that!

The glidder, grounded.

Captain Kirk takes a break and waits for the wind.

Vera and her kite.

Day 12-- The Dark Side Beckons

Day 12
Wednesday March 12th
Has it really come to this? I mean seriously, is this it? Rock bottom? The end of the road? The last straw? The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back? (Okay I can do this all day...) Aristotle, Cicero, Socrates, Plato, Confucius, Virgil, Homer, and Sun Tzu all changed their world and ours with a thought. a single well formulated thought. Locke's Letters of Toleration, Luther's 95 Theses, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Rousseau's Social Contract, The Federalist Papers, and Paine's Rights of Man changed how we think of each other with the stroke of a pen. Sprinkle in liberal use of the new-found printing press and Viola! the Age of Reason explodes! Thoreau's Waldon, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Faulkner, Samuel Longhorn Clements, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Kesey, Garcia & the Dead, Timothy Leary ("Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out!") changed how we perceived, interacted with, expanded, and enjoyed with the world around us.

The New World was discovered by a handful of burly Italians with a sextant. The American West was conquered by pioneers with nothing more then flint lock rifles and hand-stitched buckskins. The ancient Mayans discerned astrological cycles with only sheer cunning and granite pyramids. Men with only a dream and a couple thousand pounds of high-octane rocket fuel played golf on the moon. Incredible achievements have been made, civilizations built and crumbled, reasons discovered and lost. All of this has been had without the use of a bloody cell phone. How on earth did our fore bearers survive? How did the 2nd Continental Congress adopt the Declaration of Independence without text messaging? Or the Magna Carta penned without an iPhone to Google the various peculiarities of the Crown? Magellan accomplished much without a cell phone, Lewis & Clark forged their way through half of North America without a cell phone or GPS, crap even Marco Polo traveled to and documented the Orient without a camera phone.

And now after almost 31 years, I have succumbed to the beast. I wonder how I lasted this long? So here we are I suppose, and me with a frickin cellie. A brave new world indeed...

Take me to your leader...!

Day 11

Day 11
Tuesday March 11th
After much procrastination, complaining and millions of excuses I finally hooked up the old Mac and got to work. It is amazing how much crap can pile up after a few days of being disconnected. Between emails, blogging, returning Facebook messages & writings on the wall, text messages and all sorts of other electronic detriments I was bogged down for a whole night. Definitely staying in touch with friends and colleagues not here on the left coast is a huge priority.

The biggest priority though is finding gainful employment. I spent hours sending out CVs for a variety of positions. Tonight I applied for jobs in Germany, Bahrain, Abbu Dabi, Thailand, India, Washington D.C., Alaska (2 actually), L.A., the Big Apple, Prague, San Diego, and Iraq to name a few. Hopefully something will come of it. What though, will be determined much later.

Day 10

Day 10
Monday March 10th
After spending a few nights under the stars I was feeling pretty good. Unfortunately with temps in the low 80s throughout the weekend, I was also smelling pretty rank. I needed a real shower. I also needed to get back online and continue the job search. Of course the latter could wait. After a crazy day back in the office, I once again retired to the Surf Shack for a lazy afternoon of BBQ and watching Dexter episodes. Dexter is an interesting attempt at late night television. For the most part the acting is stoic and over played at times. The writing can be quirky though at times pedestrian. Despite that, it is a novel idea that catches on quick.

Quick recipe if anyone is in the mood:
-get a couple thin-ish steaks
-trim fat from steaks and rub w/ paprika (Hungarian if possible),
crushed green & red peppercorns, sea salt, crushed red pepper, and whatever else you have for spices in your trunk
-grill or pan sear a medley of red peppers, green peppers,
yellow peppers, onion, green bean, and serrano peppers
-take fresh basil, your choice of cheese (we went w/ pepperjack), and pepper medley and roll it into pinwheels with your steak
-stab with tooth picks, skewers, or tie up with a shoe lace
-slap it on the grill and cook until done to your liking

whole process takes about 2 1/2 beers (domestic micro brew of course)

Days 7, 8, 9

Days 7- 9
Friday March 7th- Sunday March 9th
I decided to head on up into the hills for the weekend. It has been a while since I have been able to escape from the hustle and bustle of Ventuckey. A weekend wandering the hills and canyons of the upper desert around Ojai's Matilija was a welcome respite. With moving, graduation, finding gainful employment, working ungodly hours, and living out of the back seat of my Focus a respite was just what I needed. I decided on the Matilija because it is super close and more importantly because it is incredibly beautiful.
With the incredible amount of snow the Santa Ynez range has gotten the river would be rushing and the foliage popping. I was excited for days!

By the time I made it out of work and fought traffic up into Ojai the sun was well below the horizon. I quickly packed up and headed out into the hills. After about a mile of hiking through the pitch black night I stumbled upon two wayward kids. They were not "lost" per say, just a little turned around. It seems that the second river crossing had proved to be a little too much for them in the dark. They retreated back down what they thought was a trail and had gotten thoroughly confused. Funny thing is, they were on the trail. They were just about to give up and bed down for the night when I bumped into them. We chatted for a bit and then they agreed to follow me across the surging second river. They figured if I could make it then they would too.

Needless the say the fording of the river was bone chilling yet refreshing. We made it into camp about an hour or so later. I couldn't understand why it was taking so long and why the pair had to keep stopping until we lit up a fire for the night. Neither had hiking packs. One had all his geared in an old Vietnam-era stuff sack bigger then he. The other had all his gear tucked under his arms with sleeping bags and extra clothes sticking out from under his arms pits. I fought hard to stifle a laugh. We built a roaring fire and dried off. Because this weekend was a new moon, I had lugged out the old 1v film camera to shoot star trails and super long exposures. As I set to doing the math for a 4 hour exposure, the kiddies crashed out.

The next morning Lucas (16 yrs old & by far one of the most brilliant teenagers I have ever met) and his companion Matt (19 yrs old and totally disillusioned with it already) treated me to an old Army favorite-- Scoobies. It seems both young men were "survivalists of a sort. They had walked out into the woods with no map, no idea where they were going, no real "gear", and for food only 2lbs or partially hydrogenated bleached flour. Oh but they did bring knives, lots and lots of knives. Just in case right?

They insisted that Scoobies would set me right for the day. They were gidding with excitement for this breakfast treat. Scoobies you see are quite simple and admittedly quite tasty. Mix up a little bit of flour, fresh water from the creek, salt and pepper, and whatever else on hand,
toss it straight in the fire and voila a Scooby.

In this case "whatever else on hand" meant a baby rattle snake and
some extra sharp cheddar I had no better use for.

The next two days were rather lazy indeed. Saturday I found a nice little rock next to a soothing waterfall and read all day. As it warmed I would strip down and jump in the pools to lounge. Then air dry and back to the book. When the sun finally began to get low in the sky I hiked up the canyon a couple of hours and jumped in the big water fall. Then back to camp and another night of long exposures.
Sunday was more of the same. You can't really ask for more.

Monday morning bright and early I made it back to town without much trouble and back to the daily grind. I was amazed at how fast everything went, absolutely bloody amazed...

The First Week

Day 6
Thursday March 6th
I spent most of the day running errands and tying up loose ends so to speak. It is really amazing how much energy goes into living out of your car! In a way it is incredibly liberating because you can go anywhere, do anything and just crash out whenever you feel like it. On the other hand it is pretty difficult to accomplish anything close to productive when you don’t have a base from which to operate. After getting gas for the stove, buying a new alarm clock, finding a lace to charge batteries, checking the mail, stopping by the storage unit to re-supply and a hundred other small things the daylight had burnt out.

Instead of wasting more time to find a place to crash I once again headed to my little retreat at the Surf Shack. I grilled up some amazing fajitas from scratch of course. We lit a roaring fire in the chimenea and hung out by the fire light. It was a relaxing evening for a change.

"Fajitas...!"

The SurfShack (I can't quite find focus...).

Day 5
Wednesday March 5th
I finally got my lens today! It is about time, now I can really kick this whole documentation thingy up a notch or two! I headed back to the old neighborhood on the Avenue for the evening. Peaches was back in town and we aimed at devouring a few bottles of California’s finest reds and brain storm on a few doc projects. It was a really cool evening to say the least. I got to touch base with some old old friends from my first years at Brooks. It is always fun to catch up on old times and swap stories about what everyone has been up to. I swear almost every sentence started with "Hey do you remember So-and-so...?" or "Dude, remember the time you...!?!" It was cool. Peaches and I have this horrible habit of always talking about hanging out and never really doing it. Needless to say it was definitely due.

Towards the end of our jam session we got onto the topic of doing a doc on eco-terrorism and the environmental movement. Peaches is getting the framework together to do a super rad piece on Derrick Jensen. If you haven’t read his stuff, you are severely doing a disservice to yourself and your community. It can be pretty revolutionary, but well worth it. It was super cool to brainstorm all the way through the environmental movement. We ragged on everyone from Emerson and Thoreau to John Muir, Edward Abbey and even Eustace Conway.

The perfect time to start taking notes on environmental activism?
After you finish your bottle of wine of course!

Day 4
Tuesday March 4th
Work today was a real bear. I get so tired of “learned” people. It seems like once you earn the right to tag assorted initials (PhD, MFT, LPC, LCSW, MD, etc) that you also received a glorified stick to be inserted superficially into your nether regions. I was so worn out that I really had no interest or energy to devote to looking for a place to crash. Instead I headed over to the surf shack and visited with my old friend PonyBoy. We hung out and watched a documentary on the ’88 Dodgers. I am not much of a Dodgers fan and all, but boy I tell you, that was one heck of a baseball team!
Truly one of the last absolutely momentous World Series!

Day 3
Monday March 3rd
After work I wandered down to the beach and watched the latter parts of a rocket blast off from Vandenberg. The rocket contrails left a really funky trail in the sky, almost directly above the setting sun. I hung out until it was too dark to write and then headed down the beach in search of a pay phone.

Ventuckey, Bakersfield by the Sea

Rockets from Vendenberg at sun set...

The line up.

After about a two mile walk I found these two pristine phones side by side just mere yards from the surf break. It was grand! Unfortunately neither worked. So back down the tussled sand I went looking and looking. Finally I found an old clunky PacBell pay phone on the pier and spent the night catching up with friends. You can imagine the looks I got from the passersby. What the crap, who still uses pay phones? Yah right!

Day 2
Sunday March 2nd
Today was a pretty gnarly day. I spent the morning finishing up with all the cleaning. I scrubbed down the stove, have you ever cleaned a stove? Man what a pain in the butt! Seriously stove cleaning is the most anti-ergonomic thing I can think of. To get into all the nooks and crannies of a stove it is a cross between full-impact yoga and drunken Twister. After about two hours I smelt like vinegar, BO, orange degreaser and burnt cheese—vegan cheese to make matters worse. As I was taking out the last bag of garbage and empty cleaning supply bottles, I let the door close behind me. Of course I had already turned in my keys so there was no way to get back in. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining, the birds were singing so I took it as a sign that this was it. It was time to move. I left all the unfinished cleaning for the professionals scheduled to tear the place apart the next morning.

Proud with what I accomplished I headed over to Dargan’s Irish Bar for a quick steak. I figured I was owed a little me time. There I bumped into Isabella and his lovely lady friend we refer kindly to as the wife. After a few drinks they convinced me to crash on there floor. I was much obliged indeed! We spent the entire evening watching this mind-blowing documentary series about folks that should be dead. Now there is something I can relate to!

DAY UNO

Well it looks like spring is almost here in wonderful Ventuckey! With the days getting longer and the sun making more regularly scheduled appearances, pretty much everyone here is getting into summer mode. Spring cleaning this year is taking on an odd feel (not that Spring cleaning ever really meant anything to us in the first place!). This is our last week at the avenue apartment which is kinda strange. Georgie is moving up to San Fran to look for work and I am still stuck in the hamster wheel of corporate America going round and round and round and round and round and, well you get the point. I gave my "two week" notice back in October with the goal of being in Portland, OR or Denver or San Fran myself sometime in January or February. Unfortunately it has not quite worked out the way I had anticipated. So March first is coming on up and change is in the air as well as burnt fish tacos left over from lunch but that is another story.

It being an election year, the stuffed shirts are all jammering about how they are the instruments of change yadda yadda yadda. No matter how red or blue you run, changed doesn't come from a talking head. Okay enough preaching, suffice to say it is coming quickly to SoCal. Of course with the excitement comes some strangeness as well. No biggie really, endings and change in and of itself is always a little odd, no matter how welcomed. I am getting ready and going through the process to move into my car. I am actually kind of excited for it to be honest. At least it is change, and I am all about change right now, no matter what that change brings (granted I like change so much more if I find it unexpectedly in my coat pocket and it will get me an extra latte before work). Anyhow the plan is to spend the next few weeks or months living in the car and documenting it for a short picture story/documentary/short film. Who knows where it will go.

The goal is to not spend more then two nights in a row at the same location and not to spend more then three nights a week in the same place. I really want it to force me to be out and about and not to settle on a certain spot or situation just because my life craves regularity all of a sudden. I am slowly ever so slowly starting to get really attracted to the liberation involved in not being confined to a box called home. Seriously I can go anywhere and hopefully will be able to take full advantage of it.

There are some things I am a little concerned about, like hygiene, storing food & a proper diet w/o refrigeration, or getting harassed by the cops (Fuckers!!!), homeless, drunk co-eds, cranky land owners, park rangers, deranged surfers, family and friends (who are collectively ALL totally against this). But for the time being, I have accepted the fact that this is an eventuality and have chosen not to worry about any of that. If it happens it happens and there is not much I can do the change that now.

The goal is to take a self-portrait each day of my sleeping situation and quick pics here and there along the way. Also I would like to film a few minutes each night of what I am going through and do quick video interviews with myself each night a la Survivor, Big Bother and any other reality show on the boob. Ideally I would like to post quick updates w/ pics and audio each day to my blog. That may prove to be a little difficult because I do not have a laptop and running the desktop computer off the car battery may not prove to be the best idea. So we will see. There are lots and lots of question marks to be determined. But I imagine I will cross the bridge when I get there.

The first of March is quickly upon us, and with it the start of this homeless car bound misadventure (my fingers are crossed). I spent the last few days doing as much indoor activities as I could-- reading, sleeping in, drinking beer for breakfast, watching movies, cooking, painting and blogging of course. Soon enough I will not be able to do any of that any more. I mean seriously, as much as I would like to, I just will not be able to follow Gray's Anatomy every Thursday. Dang it ! Not that that is a bad thing, change though at times awkward, is always welcome. And this is going to be a huge change.

The very last evening in the apartment, the humble abode that has served us so well for the last 2+ years. It is a mellowing thought leaving here. There are a lot of memories tangled up between these four walls. From painting parties to sangria nights, to crazy unannounced Bama visits, water fights, margarita popsicles, amazing sunsets, discussions of abstract pointlessness, hours pretending to be Bukowski, great tunes, and lots of experimental cooking we had it all. But new adventures await, and with them many new stories and hopefully a picture or two. We shall see, that is the only constant here.

The entire apartment is packed away except for the paintings. Okay now big breathe, this really is IT!

Everything I need to live these next few weeks is right here. This will make up my meager car living existence. The yellow Osprey bag for play clothes, black North Face for work clothes, red Bean bag for emergency change of clothes and cooking schwag, blue Timbuk2 bag for writing/reading/photo gear, Domke bag for cameras schtuff, and of course my trusty sleeping bag. Everything else I own in this corporal world is tucked away safe and sound in a storage locker. And so with one last night on the Avenue, we are soon off into the great blue yonder.