E-Baying in the Dirty B
A few people have mentioned that my red-eye escape to the south would have a hard time matching up to my trans-gender trip to the north.
You underestimate my ability to bring out the best in people. The flight itself sucked. The guy beside me was so fat that he couldn’t put the armrest down between the seats. So in other words, he took up all of his seat, and part of mine. And the Economy seats aren’t large to begin with. So I had a hard time sleeping, because I had a lot of anger for the fat man who I never said a word to, and just hated (yes I am an endomorphaphobe).
I helped the lady on my left with her crossword, I brought in 8 words, and she took care of the other 142.
In the LAX Baggage claim I recognize a guy from a party in Anchorage. He comes over to ask why I’m staring at him… oh yeah… Nat. Yes.
Coming to LA from Alaska is like a caveman walking into the cartoon world of the Jetsons. It’s really different, warm, palm trees, lots of expensive shiny, really large cars.
After sleeping 330 hours in the past month, one would think that I could bounce out of a 4h sleep night no problem. I can’t. I go to the curb to wait 3.5H for the bus to Bakersfield. The sun isn’t slanty enough to reach under the overhang to the sidewalk, so I have to stand in the Road to be in the warm sunlight. The big shiny cars don’t like this and chase me back to the side curb. I sneak back and am in the middle of repeating this game for the 32nd time when an ‘North Slope’ worker comes up and starts talking to me.
14 x 18h a day working on the oil rigs. Some guys do it longer, up to 9 weeks, thats all you’re allowed to do. You look fit you should do it. The company’s real good, Neighbours. Safer then most of the other ones. We’re working on these walking oil rings, the ones on wheels (by ‘wheels’ he is referring to monstrous cylanders 4x higher than the Escalades rolling by) when they get hot and burst it’s dangerous. Lots of people die. My skin is always cracking up there. Guess that’s why we’re called rough necks. You should really look into the work. We had spells of minus 70
I think his sales pitch needed a little work, but he drove me to Action Sports from the airport. Though first we had to go by his house where he smoked (sorry bud, but I don’t) his ‘medicine’ for his ‘paranoia’.
We had more in common that you’d think. Yeah, I’ve been to Costa Rica too, cheap there, for $50 you can get a girl for the whole day.
No he doesn’t even hold a candle to the He/She of the trip north.
Subie
Started, though she seems to be leaking a little more oil than ‘normal’.
Work, which is actually a new record for bicyclefatso my first time ever having more than 100 auctions up at once. No thanks to my POS PC which crashes hourly, and flashes me the ‘blue screen of death’ more often that I would like to admit. Dude, I’m shopping for a Mac. And a Bike, seems that I sold all the others, save the one I left in Bracebridge, and the other in Ottawa. Not that either of them are complete.
Adventure costs money. Weather it’s a surly stewardess or an African ambush, the point is to put your equanimity, or your life on the line using other peoples money. It is an insight that occurs very soon after one discovers that he or she has drifted helplessly into a life of travel and or adventure. My friend Rich Ridgeway the first American to climb the worlds second highest peak with out oxygen, sat that the essential insight occurred to him with particular force during the successful American ascent of Everest in 1976. “I was up at the magic 2400 food level feeling very good, strong”, he said “There was someone filming what I was doing, and suddenly I realized that this guy was having every bit the adventure I was. The only difference in our situations was that someone was paying him for it”. -Tim Cahill Road Fever
