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Memes are contagious ideas, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection. |
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January
30, 2005 7:35 PM
How odd that the feelings I had leaving Eugene and my known
world, feelings of loss and a sense no depth to my life have resurrfaced
as I prepare to go back to work tomorrow. I see now that it is the
movement, the constant awareness that I'm responsible for my problems
and that there no back up of me, that I will and must solve every
problem that makes me feel alone. As soon as I'm not in constant
motion, there is less to break and less to maintain, so I feel less
threat. In Quartzsite I found that as soon as I established a habit
trail - you know, coffee at the net cafe, and tasks each day, that
I feel perfectly secure. How absurd emotions can be. Once I'm back
in my spot at work I'll feel fine and be busy. Somehow I have to
remember how life shrinks to fit around my creature comforts. I'm
back to do things, write, and find that perfect free chicken co
conspirator - hah - we'll see.
 Yesterday, my first veiw of Mt. Ashland from Dunsmuir, CA. |
 Coming back to winter - climbing into Oregon. |
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Finally, my final choice today after four other tries is
this very small corner site, that is open to the south, and very
easy to back the trailer into. The dish finds the satellite on every
try! Also since I'll be moving the trailer in and out on the weekends,
I wanted something easy to back in, and this sight is close to a
straight back in shot - fairly easy compare to two of the others
I tried today.
January 28, 2005 8:48 PM
I promised some crop dusting pictures - but found that
I had left the memory card in the printer and so I was taking nothing.
Here is what I have tonight. Tomorrow is the push over the passes
so I'm on line checking snow conditions in Dunsmuir and on the Siskiyou
pass. If all goes well I'll be back in the trailer park tomorrow
afternoon.
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 Here I am in the back lot -t he RV lot with about 3 other RVs total at the Win River Casino in Redding. |
January
28, 2005 5:36 PM
I've arrived at Win-River Casino. The place is interspersed
and surrounded by trees, denses on the southeast side where the
dish must find the satellite. I tried it, taking a chance that it
might get lucky through the trees,and I could see a little signal
on the computer but not enough to satisfy the controller. I went
out and sited along the dish and then drove the truck around in
a big circle so that I was facing the same way, but this time as
far away from the south fence as possible, to slightly change the
apparent height of the trees. Tried again and got lucky with a great
signal. I bet in the summer with leaves on these trees it will be
very unlikely here. I'm borrowing George's technique of having a
clickable link to Mapquest, using his code and putting in my longitude
and latitude. Let's see if it works!
Click here to see where I am on Mapquest. As george likes to
say "I'm the red star"
Hah! it works. I zoomed in on mapquest - and I can see that about 60 feet off Rancheria to the south which is exactly where I'm sitting. How spooky. I know where the satellite is and the satellite has to know exactly how far I am from it in order to converse, and thus "they" always know exactly where I am when the dish is up and on. Hmmm. "Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep, it starts when you're always afraid, step out of line, the man come, he take you away" Buffalo Springfield.
January
28, 2005 2:21 PM
I'm outside of Willows at the rest area just north. I've got an
hour before I need to head to Redding and the Casino.
Two nights ago my step daughter sent me an essay she had written
for her woman's studies class and I edited it for basic grammar
etc. I thought it was good and touched on issues that I was glad
to hear they had students thinking about. This kind of thinking
- which is called critical thinking is taught less and less according
to what I've heard from educators in California. Instead we do skills
acquisition, but not fundatmental examination of our own core assumptions.
Critical thinking is the examination of you and your societies core
beliefs and ascertaining, if possible their value. When I had that
thought, because she when she asked me what I thought of the article,
the best I could come up with is "good". She thanked me
for in depth analysis, and assumed that I didn't think about these
things or care. Au contrair! Critical thinking is the absolute basis
of leading an examined life. Testing the foundations is what I have
done for 40 years. I'm just not very goot at it because it is exhausting.
Yet if I could do it more, I might find that there are many things
that I maintain - that take energy but that I don't even like or
believe in. So it would be worthwhile.
Her women's
course was focused on the issue of women being discrimated against
in many ways, and her paper made the point that gender discrimation
hurts both the men and the women, whick I agree with. However what
brought me to a stand still mentally when she asked me about the
paper, is that I feel women's issues are simply a subset of the
larger issue of how we use and abuse each of us to keep our society
lubricated and functional. Discrimination is a critically needed
skill to get you out of your crib. You better be able to discriminate
between your mother's breast and your fathers at a very early age.
See you already knew that there are physical differences, right.
Discrimination keeps us from trusting classes of people that have
a high probablity of harming us, stealing our energy, life, possesions,
tools, or sanity. We can't know each person individually so we use
markers - like race, education, language to broadly deal with large
groups of people, classifying them as "us" or "other",
threat or not. This may not be fair, but there are just way too
many of us in the chicken coup for individual referrals.
But she was on to something. Men and women are controlled and damaged
by our gender rolls, but that is the price of civilization as it
stands today. It's not condescending for me to open a door for a
lady, I do it because my mother put that meme in me and it remains.
The lady smiles at me (if not involved in gender redefinition -
i.e., women's studies -for instance) not because she wishes to have
sex with me (oh no, say it aint so!) but because her mother put
that meme in her head. The result of that 1 second exchange is comfort
on both parts that society is working the way it should. To change
this, you have to be a pain in the ass to everyone around you all
of the time, or at least for the time that you are trying to make
these changes. All these roles, about work, bankruptcy, thrift,
and doing "good" are all memes that live on in this particular
culture (all cultures - but different memes for them than me) because
they allow the culture to grow and make more little citizens. As
the song says, mothers have daughters who become mothers, so mothers
treat your daughters well - something like that.
So when I say I'm a free chicken who doesn't want to live by the
memes of this society, I'm telling you you're all nuts or stupid
or completely brainwashed. (we're all brainwashed of course, meaning
we have learning many things we accept as true - which is as valid
as the PAS label (presumed as safe) put on all drugs already in
common use in the 1950's when the FDA was formed. Things are true
and work as memes in the society only when we all agree that they
are true and then act on them! So a free chicken, like a feminist
is a pain in the ass most of the time. Always saying the "emperor
has no clothes."
Certainly I, or anyone who says you shouldn't own a Lexus and have
a mortgage and worry about schools, and accept a religion, and vote
for George or Kerry, is of little value to this society. We need
worker bees and the family that has all the things and all the associated
stuff of middle class life is the baby engine that counts. For some
woman, growing dope in the mountains, or choosing to be a nun with
a vow of poverty, well we're just the spice on the main course,
but we should never mistake ourselves as revolutionaries. Nor, as
some of you think, are we just people who failed at being middle
class. We are simply people who just couldn't stand it anymore accepting
these increasingly absurd assumptions (look out for George, here
comes creationism, which is just in front of the dark ages). We
revolt against living in a dreamworld which works for such a low
percentage of the population and stresses everyone else into prozac,
or excessive exercise, or additions of any kind, and I suppose that
is why I live in my trailer alone. Hell, sometimes I don't want
to listen to me - so I'll shut up now.
Bye for now chicklets. Good good pictures of a crop duster to pull
off the camera tonight. See you then from the casino floor where
I will bet yet again - nothing. What a bore I am!
January
28, 2005 10:25 AM
Morning in Lodi. Checked the weather and Dunsmuir and Weed
are getting snow, and it won't end until late tonight. My plan was
to make Yreka tonight, but that seems like a stressful idea now.
Instead today will be a mosey and slow paced trip with a total travel
time to Redding of 4.5 hours. I'm aiming for the Wind River Casino
lot at the back - you know the one, with the trees and beautiful
quiet. They put the RV lot way behind the casino, but they have
a little shuttle and security that comes by. It is nice and easy
to get in and out of. I'll just need to find a little open patch
of Southeast sky for the dish to talk to you. Oh, the big rigs around
me are starting up. It brings up the old racer in me, I want to
pull the orange wheel chocks out, and start up too. Of course almost
everyone is faster than me now.
I think I took a few pictures as I drove yesterday, I get them out
of the camera, hold on. .The old camera doesn't have a USB connector
so I have to stick the card in my HP printer - which has camera
card slots and connect the printer and connect it to the PC and
plug it into power. No, I don't mind, thanks for waiting. Here there
are.
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Leaving Barstow I'm headed to Mojave (these were all from yesterday, and one pic from the night before). Off to the south I could see this beautiful range of mountains. On the other side must be I-15 headed for LA. Here the sky is big and that is why I love this side of the mountains. |
 My favorite rest stop - between Barstow and Mojave, free water (tastes good and good for you, and free dump). I pumped my watertank dry last night, so it was good to get here. I won't fill more than a 1/3 of the tank because of weight. Water is over 8lbs per gallon and I have to lift that weight over Tehachapi (meaning gas consumption and abuse of the truck engine). |
 See the flooding leak. Believe it or not, someone has repaired this faucet with duct tape. |
 So what the hell is that hanging over the mountains, Oh, it's my weather for the next 3 months. Shit. |
 However I grouse about the pitifal state of the state in CA, My little space loving hi tech heart has hope for humanity when I see these big wind generators spinning slowly and massively and powerfully. We still might have it, a little. Critical thinking might not be dead, just waiting for us to need the real technologies for the next 100 years. |
 Hey maybe instead of Casa del Rolltec the trailer should simply have the name - Might Mouse! Opinions? |
This
was what I found when I pulled into the flying J's two nights
ago. I could hear something making a terrible racket from behind
me. Not everything I do the first go around is perfect. The
three sheet metal screws I used to secure the front flap ( until
I can build a better door) had vibrated out and luckily the
rear group of four had hung on. It was a five minute repair,
but definite loss of cool points I drove across the parking
area. Big rigs over $250,000 always have frowns on their grills
anyway. Usually women love the look of the airstream, and men
are just OK with it, but I sense that many don't think it is
serious hardware, not ramped up enough. I console myself with the sure knowledge that in 10 years their investment of 250,000 will have depreciated to 20,000. My rig will have doubled in value again, plus mine is real and everything works and it is a little powerhouse of comfort, energy, and connectivity. My battery bank could power all their rigs while they come with minimal solar and jokes for power storage. "Here I come to save the day!" - Mighty mouse. Hey, maybe that should be the name. |
The trip up I-5
to Lodi last night was a depressing part of the trip, as it is each
time. The road conditions are awful. The potholes, unmarked and
numerous beat the hell out of the truck and trailer. When I hit
Stockton, tired and at dark, and worst - at 6pm - I found myself
in rush hour and even speeding as much as possible I was passed
from both sides continually - like watching a weaving taking place
only I was in the loom. The problem with this is only that I could
then not avoid the potholes and they were everywhere. Some of these
holes were bad enough that the road should have been closed. No
other state in my trip has roads, federal money roads in this condition,
and even without the excuse of freezing and thawing. I did a complete
exam of the vehicle today and checked tire pressures and fluid levels.
I can't believe how reliable the F250 is considering that I'm pulling
nearly 5000 lbs with full throttle for long periods of time. I'm
going to reward it with a head job and new gaskets when I get to
Eugene.
Time to get some
stuff done, that 16 oz coffee is kicking in! I'll be going slow
today hitting every rest stop to walk and stretch. I was pretty
exhausted last night when I pulled in and fell asleep shortly after
9pm. I didn't even get through 1/2 of a movie (Day after Tomorrow).
So today is
a "come down easy time" day - which was from a poem I
wrote when I was 25 or so. I won't inflict the whole thing on you
because I would have to find it. An old friend has one of my poems
about the building of his house built right into the wall along
with newspapers and pictures of his family. That is so when the
house is torn down for salvage at some future time, people with
have the living history of us. I love you Mark and miss you. He
and I have never been the same since his daughter died. We were
in Benton county in a rural area, we both owned farms close to each
other. He was a real friend. We dug the hole with several friends
and we literally buried her coffin. It was one of the most powerful
moments of my life to squat in that hole and crack through the dirt
and rock with a pick and then shovel out the dirt to make room for
her.
And then to put Julie in, in her small casket. There was no better
way for me, I don't know about Mark, but no better way for me to
handle the grief and share in his pain and all of pain of her death,
and to say goodbye. Maybe we would all be better off if we buried
our own close people. (That's a russian thing - they don't exclude
non family - everyone you love is a close person, and they commonly
refer to their "close people". I like it I want more close
people, I don't want my life to get small like it does at work,
that's why I'm a free chicken, I don't want to shrink to complete
aloneness.). Talk at you all later. - time to go.
January
27, 2005 6:57 PM
Where is the Casa del Rolltec tonight? 38.116 Latitude and 121.39
Longitude. Because of all the gear I carry back
and forth from the truck when I stop, computer, cell phone, GPS, charger
for the computer, charger for the cell phone, and digital camera, I realized
my trip, the Safari Airstream is a shrine to technology so I've been call
it Casa del Rolltec (get it?) just to myself. What do you think? In case
you don't want to look up the lat/lon on www.mapquest.com, I'm in Lodi,
CA, just north of Stockton in a Flying J's very much the same as the one
last night.
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