Dameon Laird's Journal

4:03pm: Back in Frisco
Crazy shit went down in Bakersfield. First, I got drunk and went to jail for being in an abandoned house. Not really a big deal, I was just in overnight. So the next day, I got out, tracked down the friend I went to jail with, and immediately bought beer and began drinking again. Then I got jumped and my hat got taken.

Apparently, somebody started a rumor that Radar was a narc, so he got beaten up really badly, and then I took a few punches for traveling with him. No big deal, it's all healed up already, but losing my hat pissed me off. We were told to get out of town, so me, Radar, two other kids, and two dogs hopped a train out of town that night.

I'm back in San Francisco now, and I think I'm going to take it easy and cut down on the drinking for a while, because last night I drank a ton of whiskey and blacked out. My backpack and sleeping bag wound up getting really badly burned in a fire, so I have to replace those now. So yeah, definitely cutting down on the alcohol.

3:30pm: Bakersfield
I left Ocean Beach (San Diego) a few weeks ago. At first, I was traveling with three other guys, and we had a plan to ride trains to the east coast and live it up over there. At first, they seemed cool, then two of them turned out to be kind of crazy. We spent days working our way away from San Diego, just sort of taking our time and enjoying the trip.

Things turned bad when we ran into a camp, and they decided it was just a yuppie camp and decided to raid it. They wound up turning over the camp and taking all kinds of stuff, then we all sat drinking nearby. I asked them not to touch the camp, just in case, or at least wait until morning, but I couldn't get them to listen to me. So we sat there drinking, and eventually these two homebums came along, and freaked out because, despite our best lies and objections, their camp had obviously been raided and we were sitting right there drinking. They got on a cell phone and started calling friends, and we cleared out.

The next day, two of them got arrested while trying to hitch out, and me and the other one sat watching them get arrested. I decided to press on and go up to LA, and the other guy went back to Ocean Beach to wait until they got out of jail.

Getting to LA was easy; you can take public transportation from San Diego to LA for about 6 bucks. I decided to go to Venice Beach, because I've heard so much about the place.

Venice Beach is a big tourist beach; it's about a mile long stretch of beach thronged with small stores, sidewalk vendors, and performers. I wasn't surprised to get there and run into a bunch of people I knew, and I proceeded to party like a rock star. Well, a rock star that only drinks alcohol and smokes pot.
I was there about a week before I heard about a Rainbow Gathering nearby, and decided I wanted to go. I took along a guy from Venice Beach, Radar (who is probably going to travel with me for a while, at least until I reach Seattle). We had a good time getting out to the gathering, hitting up a Trader Joe's dumpster and getting various goodies to take with us.

The gathering was a small one, very different from the national Rainbow Gathering I went to, about 50 people instead of 50,000. The best part was that most of the people there were from Ocean Beach, so it was like going out into the woods and running unexpectedly into about 20 friends. Then people came from Venice Beach, and I knew most of them too, so practically all the people there were already friends.

It was out in the Seqouia national forest, which is absolutely beautiful, with mountains and rivers everywhere. It also has several hot springs. I went to one of the hot springs twice, which made it my first trip to a hot springs, and it was absolutely amazing. There were three tubs built out of concrete, natural stones, and various odd things, with water in each ranging from 100-110 degrees. It was like sitting in a bath tub with a bunch of naked people out in the woods along a river. Definitely an experience to remember.

Finally, after about a week out there and smoking lots of pot, me and Radar decided it was time to leave. We hitched back to Bakersfield today, and from here we're planning on riding freight trains to Emeryville and hitching from there to San Francisco. That should be where my next post is from.

12:16pm: San Diego, Again
I'm back in San Diego now. Hitching from Phoenix turned out pretty cool. I got a bit down I-10, then I decided I wanted to go check out Slab City, since it was only 40 miles out of my way. Slab City is basically a permanent camp by Niland, in southern California, where everybody kind of does their own thing.

I got picked up by a bunch of cool people who were over here from Sweden, driving a rental van around, and once they picked me up, it didn't take long to get to Slab City. Slab City itself was kind of cool, but kind of disappointing at the same time. There's a ton of people out there, but mostly it's just old people with really expensive RVs that don't really want anything to do with anybody. Still, there's other kinds of people, too, and people have built bars out there and everything. There's even a library that was pretty impressive. I have photos of the place that I'll put up when I get a chance.

We only stayed in Slab City a couple of days, and I went along with the Swedish people because they offered me a ride all the way to San Diego. We got to the border and three of them went into Mexico on foot, leaving me and the last one of them to drive to San Diego. I hate goodbyes.

It was raining when we got here, but it's pretty dry out now. The last Swedish guy left earlier this morning, because he's driving up to San Francisco and has to be there by Monday. It's weird spending time in a city and making friends with everybody, then you leave for a little bit and come back, and it's mostly completely different people.

1:13pm: San Diego has been cool. I've spent my time here just relaxing on the beach during the day, and hanging out at beach fires at night. I was sleeping on some cliffs where the ocean comes right under where I'm sleeping when the tide comes in, which was an amazing view to go to sleep and wake up to. Today I'm heading off to Phoenix, which will probably be the end of my travels for a while. I'm going to take buses as far as they'll get me to the east of San Diego, then hitch along I-8 to where it meets with I-10 south of Phoenix, and take I-10 the rest of the way. Altogether, it's about 350 miles, so with luck, I'll be in Phoenix by the end of tomorrow. I don't expect to get far today, since I'm leaving kind of late.

8:29am: Still here in Santa Cruz, but I plan to be leaving in a day or two, while the weather's still nice. I actually drank so much here that I had to decide to take a break from drinking. My body needed a few days off, because all the alcohol has been tearing it up. I've been getting blacked out drunk just about every day.

My current plan is to head down to San Diego, spend a week or so there, then head straight for Phoenix to spend Christmas with family. I'm also planning to get a job in Arizona for a bit and save up enough money for a set of Uilleann Pipes, because it'd be really awesome to learn to play those.

In bad news, my bag of instruments got stolen. I've had just about everybody in this town searching for them the past week, and it doesn't look like they're turning up. That means my main way of making money is gone, not to mention that some of those instruments are irreplaceable. I'm trying not to get too upset over it. Once I get working I can buy some new whistles.

1:34am: I don't even know how to sum up everything that's happened since last I posted. Lots of craziness. I'm in Santa Cruz now, and the cops are harassing all the homeless people, trying to drive them out. Giving them tickets for the tiniest infraction. I got a ticket for sitting too close to an ATM (in actuality, a change machine that didn't even work). A friend of mine got three tickets in a day, and they took his gear away and he couldn't get it back for three days. Sleeping outside without a sleeping bag is not fun.

Other than that, Santa Cruz is pretty much pure awesome.

5:35pm: San Francisco is a lot of fun. It's positively gigantic, and then there's all the other bay area cities you can get to on the light rail. There's a lot to explore and check out. I got here, and there were a bunch of people I knew already here, but they all left a couple of days ago, which is sad.

With all there is to do and explore, most of the travelers here actually just go to Haight street, panhandle money, spend it all on alcohol, drink it in Golden Gate Park, and do that over and over until they leave. I did that for a few days, but it got boring. Especially once all my friends left. It was, however, funny waking up in the morning, looking at the spot we were all sitting, and seeing a couple dozen empty alcohol bottles of various kinds.

I've been doing a lot of busking here, and it's been decent. Not great, but decent. San Francisco has the worst bunch of buskers I've seen, though. Some of the worst musicians I've ever EVER seen are here. Earlier today, I saw a guy practically raping a poor violin. All he was doing was making it screech.

More on SF later.

10:49am: You're Leaning on the Horn!
I was getting on a southbound train from Portland when I saw two other people getting on the same train. I waved as they passed, and grabbed a grainer further down, tucking myself into the cubbyhole. It wasn't long before the train stopped in Brooklyn yard and we had a chance for some conversation. Turned out the guy and girl were also going to the bay area, and were interested in traveling there together. This was the start of one of the worst traveling groups ever.

Things went smoothly on the ride to Eugene. We sat on our separate grainers, and when the train occasionally stopped I'd walk up to their car for conversation. In Eugene, we grabbed a nice open boxcar going the rest of the way to Roseville. The ride through the Cascades was equally smooth, if a bit cold. Then things started going bad.

The other guy proposed getting on one of the rear units during the crew change in Dunsmuir, since the girl was short and would have real trouble getting off the boxcar in the fly before Roseville, and he was set on getting off at 10 mph before we hit the yard. I was against it, because I really don't like the idea of pissing off the engineer because he catches us in a unit, but I was outvoted. I should have stayed on the boxcar.

Our train stops in a little town a bit north of Roseville, and the guy decides we should hide in the engine room (don't do that unless you want to get electrocuted). He opens the door, and there's a bar about halfway up the doorway, which he says he's never seen before. He promptly attempts to move the bar, and an alarm starts blaring. Of course, there's absolutely nowhere near the train to hide. We go to the other unit and cram all three of us and our gear into the bathroom.

It's not long before the engineer comes in and yells "Come on out! The police are on their way!" We come out and ask "Really?"

"Nah," he says. But he is pissed about the alarm going off on one of his units. Turns out there's work up ahead on the tracks, and the train won't be moving until late evening. I say we should just hitch, because we're only about 100 miles from Roseville or Sacramento. We walk the four miles to highway 99 and stick our thumbs out.

They give it a whole hour before the guy says "I'm going back to the train. I don't hitchike, I ride trains." So we walk the four miles back to the train and sit there waiting for four hours until it starts moving. I should have stayed behind and hitched.

So we're back on our unit, a couple of hours later, and approaching Roseville. We're all looking out the windows to try and spot a mile marker, when I hear the horn blaring. "That's odd," I think. "They don't normally just lean on the horn like that." Then I get a horrible thought and look at the other two. The girl is leaning against one of the dashboards right where the horn button is, and she has been for about 15 seconds.

"You're leaning on the fucking horn!" I shout. Not that it matters now; the engineer surely knows we're here and is definitely letting the bulls in Roseville know we're here. The next 20 minutes consists of staring at the speedometer and praying it drops down to a speed we can get off of, as we get closer and closer to the Roseville yard. Finally, only a couple of miles out, it gets down to 15 mph. We ditch the train and run like hell and hide a bit away from the tracks.

The next day, they ditch me, which was a huge favor to me considering they used up a good $60 on my EBT card and fucked up every single step of the way.

The moral of the story: Don't ride units unless you'll die otherwise, and don't travel with people just because they're going the same way as you.

10:55am: Still in Portland, but I've been given an irresistable offer. I'm being lured back up to Seattle by the offer of free high-end pennywhistles in return for going back there and recording some demos on them for their maker. We're talking hundreds of dollars in instruments just for playing them and recording it. So I'll be headed back to Seattle in a day or two (after I get my contacts today) to take up that offer. After which, I'll make a beeline south to California, bypassing Oregon as much as possible.

Oh, and somebody gave me a $50 boehm-system flute in great condition yesterday. So now I have to learn to play that. I've also gotten some other stuff out of being in Portland so long, so being stuck here wasn't a complete waste of time.

11:27am: Partying in Portland


I'm currently hanging out in Portland. Been here about a week now. My first day here, I ran into some friends from last time I was traveling, and I spent a couple of days getting drunk with them.

Last Sunday I went to something called fire jam, which is completely unlike anything I've seen before. It's a bunch of people going under a bridge at night and beating drums, spinning fire, drinking, and doing a lot of drugs. It goes all night. The crazy thing is that the cops don't mess with it. I didn't see a single cop there until one came through in the morning to wake us all up. It's unbelievable that this happens in the same spot every week and the cops don't put a stop to it.

Unfortunately, my last contact fell out, and I'm blind as a bat without them, so I'm currently stuck in this city until I make the money for an eye exam.

A bunch of travelers from some forums I frequent happened to be in Portland at the same time, so we had a get together. It was cool just hanging out and getting very drunk with a bunch of train hoppers, talking trains until we all stumbled off to go to sleep. We even had an engineer hanging out with us, which was funny.



In a way, I'm going to be sorry to leave Portland, but in another way, I'm already ready to grab a train south to Eugene.

11:22am: On the Road Again
After a brief hiatus in Seattle, I'm back on the road again. Yesterday, armed with some tips, I went down to a spot by the railroad in Seattle. Then came the waiting. And more of the waiting. And the endless waiting. Trains came that were going too fast. Trains came with cars I couldn't ride. Trains came when too many people were around.

Finally, tired of the waiting, I all but gave up, wrapping myself in a sleeping bag and falling asleep in a doorway by the tracks. I wake up to the sound of a train passing by, and watched it slow down to a crawl, stopping in front of me. "No way," I muttered sleepily, half expecting the train to start moving again the instant I move toward it. I check my phone to see the time; it's 1 am. I give it a few minutes, and when it doesn't start moving, I realize I'm wasting my time and hurriedly stuff my sleeping bag in my backpack.

A perfectly rideable car is parked right in front of where I was sleeping. Obviously, this is destined to be. I throw my gear on, and squish myself (and the gear) into the tiny little cubby hole that grainers have. All 6'2 of me, PLUS the gear, goes into a space about 4x4. As the train continues not to move, I decide to get out and see if I can't find a car with a more spacious hiding spot.

It quickly becomes obvious that this is the only rideable car on the entire train. I sob a little, mentally, and go back to my hiding spot, waiting for the train to start moving. And waiting. Finally, about half an hour later, it starts moving, and now the waiting stops and the worrying begins. It could stop in one of the yards in Seattle. It might turn east. It's too convenient, probably some sort of hobo trap.

But it keeps moving south, out of Seattle, and I give a mental cheer. I picked a train by myself, and got on it by myself, and I'm not dead, and I'm going the direction I want to go. Huzzah!

It passes straight through the train yard in Tacoma, and I huzzah some more. I'd been a bit worried about Tacoma being its final destination.

Then, disaster. My train stops a bit north of Tacoma. I mentally urge the train on. I caress my car and tell it it's a good car, and I love it, if only it'll just tell its friend the engine to start up again. All to no avail. I finally get out and take a look around. It's not quite a train yard, and there's no other trains parked there, but there's a bunch of tracks.

I ponder the situation. I'm not THAT far from Tacoma. I could always walk back there with my tail between my legs and take the bus to Portland in defeat. Or I could wait with the train, betting it's going somewhere. I finally decide to wait, and squish myself back into my hiding spot with numerous groans and banging of knees. I decide to try and get some sleep, and finally manage to get to something like sleep.

I wake up in the early morning to the hissing of air brakes being released. Finally! The train is moving! I'm not disappointed as it tears out onto the tracks, quickly building speed.

The view is beautiful, mostly ocean and forest. Nothing else interesting happens until, after coming out of a long tunnel, I check my GPS and see that Portland is only a few miles away. The train stops, I hop off, climb up a ridiculously steep hill, and hop on a bus downtown. And it only took 12 hours of being squished in a tiny little space...

Still, it's my first successful solo train ride.

8:37am: There's a pub called "The Black Cock" in a town in England called Cockermouth.

That is just...unbelievable sexual innuendo.

11:52pm: All I can really think about is getting back on the road. I don't even know if I'll wait to raise the money for new contacts and a new ID before leaving again. I just want to be out there traveling again. I think I've finally found my element; it's funny how I never really imagined this life for myself, and it turns out to be the one I've been looking for all along.

I think if there's any real magic left in this world, it's to be found on dark roads in the middle of nowhere. Or among the crazy transients sitting around campfires telling stories. Or on a train going through wilderness only the engineers and train hoppers ever see.

Going to get my camera before leaving this time, so you guys can see some of the cool things I'm seeing.

10:08pm: I have returned to Seattle to face disturbing, nay, dark and horrible portents.

It seems my so-called "friends", who only two months ago I stayed up with until dawn drinking and listening to loud music, can no longer stay up any longer than 10 pm. ON WEEKENDS. I am faced with two conclusions: They have fallen under the influence of some dark and terrible force, or they have become utter pussies. I have no choice but to stay up, drink their liquor, and brood over the cause and repercussions of this change.

And yet, more disturbing signs. My best friend has become health-conscious, worrying about losing weight (even though he only weighs 20 or 30 pounds more than me), and caring about what foods he eats. He goes so far as to use rice noodles in his spaghetti rather than the perfectly good traditional noodles we all love.

What dark times are these, where such things can occur? Where no noise complaints issue forth from the neighbors, because there is no loud music to be heard late into the night, and where it is okay to sleep before we have even drank half a bottle of rum? My mind turns to the prophecies of 2012, previously lightly dismissed, and the many who claim the end of the world is nigh. It may be that these occurrences are harbingers of the end to come.

Has some dark and terrible force taken the minds of those I once called friends, turning them away from the ways of partying and lack of care for bodily health? If so, what else might they be capable of? Listening to soft rock? Extolling the virtues of James Blunt and Damien Rice? Drinking liquor that costs more than $20 a bottle? Perhaps, even, drinking mixed drinks more complicated than vodka and one other ingredient?

We face frightening times. Look to those close to you, and be afraid. Be very afraid.

10:20am: As we pulled into Rainbow Gathering, the guy I was riding with said:

"Want some acid?"

"Well, I don't really have any money..."

"Well, want some free acid?"

So the moment I got there, I was given two hits of free acid, which I took right away. The girls I came in with were headed to Jerusalem Camp, so as we walked, I just followed them, because I was too high to find my own way anywhere. As we walked down the path, everybody said "Welcome home, brother."

The acid was really kicking in as I came into Jerusalem Camp, but it would've been a weird experience anyway. There were a bunch of (obviously high) rabbis there doing their jewish thing, which involved lots of talking in a foreign language and whatever it is jews do. I sat and watched, and couldn't understand anything going on.

Eventually, I decided to go further into the gathering, and it was like an entire city of people out in the woods. It went on for miles and miles, with tents and camps set up everywhere, and me on acid trying to find my way around.

I'm going to try my best to sum up Rainbow Gathering, because there was way too much for me to write about it without going on and on. That first day, I couldn't find the spot I set up my hammock, because I was just plain too high, so I stayed up all night at a large fire where people had set up tiers of seats. People were playing drums (because that's all hippies really want to do, is form drum circles), so I just sat and listened and watched.

There was plenty of food, and you didn't really have to do anything except stand in line and hold out your bowl for it. I hadn't thought to bring a bowl, so I went to a part of the gathering that was just for bartering, and traded my sleeping pad for one. The only problem was that just about all the food being served at most of the camps was vegetarian, and I'll tell you, that played hell on my digestive system.

I occasionally found some other musicians to jam with, but couldn't find many that actually knew how to play their instrument (remember the earlier post about how hippies always think they can play wind instruments, but never can). I ran into another guy with a pennywhistle who just played random notes in the second and third octaves and thought he was great. It was very painful to listen to.

2:57am: Back in Seattle now.

7:11pm: Once I get back to Seattle (should be just a few days), I'll put together a map showing the route I've taken.

6:48pm: Deciding to break up with my group and go on alone was a hard decision; I hadn't done any traveling alone since I left Olympia, and it's nice to have people around to watch your back and talk to while you're waiting for a ride. I kept flip flopping on the issue, until I finally flipped my lucky coin (a bicentennial silver dollar) to decide. It came up tails, and I decided to strike out on my own the next day.

I left early in the day, and woke up everybody to say goodbye. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged, and Bob gave me a ride into Salt Lake City, dropping me off at the onramp. I was sorry to leave them, but we'd stayed at Bob's house a few days; it was July 3rd, and Rainbow Gathering had started on the first.

I stood about four hours at that onramp in 100 degree weather before somebody finally stopped and picked me up. It was some rednecks headed to Rock Springs to do a construction job. I laid in the back of their truck on top of their equipment, and as we left Utah and went into Wyoming, I watched the sun go down over the mountains while they passed me back beers through the window.

There was a nervous few minutes when we stopped in a trailer park outside Rock Springs so they could visit friends. I told them I was thinking about just hitching up 191 that same night in the dark, and one of them made a joke about some cowboy picking me up and raping me. I almost wondered whether that joke was them leading up to something, and maybe they'd stopped at that trailer park to have some fun with me. The kind of fun that leaves your ass sore. Thankfully, nothing happened. They simply dropped me off at the Wal-Mart in town.

It was already dark, but I had some hope that hippies might be at Wal-Mart; there weren't any. I decided to wander around and see if any of the dumpsters around had good food in them. During my wanderings, I saw two women walking with packs, and I knew that they had to be headed to Rainbow Gathering. I caught up with them as they were going into a motel.

"You ladies going to Rainbow Gathering?" I asked. They were. One of them actually offered to let me share their room, but the other was nervous, which I understood. I gave them what little information I had about getting to the gathering, and told them my plan was to hang out at Wal-Mart a bit the next day and see if any hippies came along, then hitch up highway 191 to the gathering. They gave me their cell phone number and asked to call if I got any leads, and we said good night.

I finally wound up sleeping in some scrub near the Wal-Mart parking lot. Of course, at about 4 in the morning, sprinklers came on and I had to scramble to move before I got soaked.

I woke up early the next morning, and sat in the Wal-Mart parking lot, looking for hippies. I wasn't there half an hour before a normal looking guy came up to me.

"You going to Rainbow Gathering?" he asked me.

"Yup."

"Want a ride?"

"Definitely."

Then I used his cell phone to call the girls I met last night, and secured a ride for them too. This made me sort of their hero.

On the ride up to Rainbow Gathering, it turned out the guy giving us a ride had been living in Rock Springs, which apparently has a huge amount of jobs. Their Wal-Mart was starting people at $12 an hour. He'd just decided to go up there to check it out for a day.

A few hours later, we finally pulled into Rainbow Gathering.

7:12pm: (The last entry was out of sync, something just recent. This continues from the post before that.)

Tony dropped us off at the drum circle, and it turned out that the guaranteed ride he'd promised us from there wasn't there. So much for guarantees. We all said goodbye to him, and frankly, I wasn't too sad to be parted from him.

I need to back up a bit here. I first met Beth back in Eugene; she's a pretty girl, and we just talked a little bit. I then saw her at Mutant Fest, and talked to her there some too. I was too high the entire time of Mutant Fest to try and really get together with her, and I didn't want to make chasing tail part of my whole trip anyway.

I was surprised to see Beth here in Salt Lake City now, at this drum circle. You seem to run into the same people on the road a lot, traveling around, which just goes to show that it really is a small world. Well, of course I couldn't resist inviting her to our traveling group, especially since I don't like to see a woman traveling alone. She was happy to join up.

"Well, we can just make a sign saying 'need a ride to Rainbow Gathering'," I said to Freddy.

"Did somebody say they need a ride to Rainbow Gathering?" a guy spoke up from behind us. "If you want, you can sell off these stickers here to make gas money, and I'll give you a ride up there." This was Bob, an old guy who, it turned out, had been to plenty of Rainbow Gatherings, had followed the Grateful Dead around, and done a lot in his life.

We divvied up the stickers and set to work. I ain't much of a salesman, so I'll admit I didn't sell any, and neither did anybody else except Freddy. Freddy took off his shirt, wrote "I sell stickers" on his back with marker, and sold off plenty of stickers.

Bob offered us hospitality and said we could stay a couple of days at his house, if we wanted. We wanted. Bob was good to us; he took us to the swimming pool, took us to an all you can eat steak and shrimp place, and him and his wife seemed happy to have us around. I took those couple of days and spent a lot of time hanging around Beth, talking and listening. I did more listening than talking; I really prefer to hear from other people than be heard.

We got kind of close, I'll admit, but I could already tell I was in the friend zone. I'm familiar with the friend zone. When you're in the friend zone, you might as well be on another planet. I could tell already that I didn't want to travel with a girl when she wanted to be just friends, and I wanted more.

1:53pm: Our ride was a guy named Tony, essentially the leader of Meat Camp. The plan was that he would take me and Freddy to Portland, then to Salt Lake City, where he knew somebody with a hippie bus that would take us the rest of the way to Rainbow Gathering, near a little town called Pinedale in Wyoming.

The ride to Portland was more or less uneventful, but cramped, with us riding in the back seat of a pickup truck for hours. We pulled into Portland in the early evening, and wound up with a house shared by several people from Meat Camp. It was a cool little house, sort of a haven for travelers passing through the city, with maps of the area on the wall. We were going to be there for a couple of days, which didn't bother me, since there was plenty of time before Rainbow Gathering.

Before long, it was obvious that Freddy and Tony were getting involved, which should have been a hint that there would be trouble down the road. Matters got more complicated when Freddy hooked up with an ex-girlfriend of his that lived in Portland and decided to bring her along, saying she was a lesbian so Tony wouldn't get jealous.

The second night I was in Portland, Tony, Freddy, and another guy decided to go to a club. Without thinking, I agreed to go along, even though I'm not really the clubbing sort of guy. My dancing skills resemble the movements of a fish flopping around on the ground out of the water.

The club was, no surprise, a gay club in front and a goth club in back. I walked in to find men in drag singing karaoke. I'm not really the clubbing sort of guy. I'm definitely not the gay clubbing sort of guy. I tried the other part of the club, which wasn't so much "goth" as "kind of a little bit goth". It was more tolerable, but since I don't dance, and I hate trying to have shouted conversations over loud throbbing music, I just sat at the bar and smoked.

Thankfully, it wasn't too long before we left. We went to a little party in an apartment with about 6 people, and this was more my speed. I spent time just sitting outside, smoking, and talking to a pretty drunk girl. She sniffed me and said I smelled like movement. That sounded a lot better than saying I smelled like BO and dirt.

To finish the night off, we went to this sweet-ass donut place and got a bunch of donuts, went to Wendy's and got a bunch of burgers, then went back to the house and watched Family Guy and American Dad while we gorged ourselves.

The next day was time to leave, so we packed up our gear into the back of the truck and three of us packed in the back seat for the 11+ hour drive from Portland to Salt Lake City. It was another uneventful drive.

I wasn't fond of Salt Lake City from the moment I saw it. The city is in a large valley, where crap is pumped into the air from oil refineries and other industrial plants, so there's an ever present haze of smog over the city. The locals are conservative, and generally not fond of anybody that looks out of place. Needless to say, we weren't very welcome.

Me, Freddy, and his (not really) lesbian girl went out on the town to try to dumpster dive up some food. We had no luck, but a completely random score. Outside of a Pizza Hut was a pinata hanging from a tree, and out of curiosity we lowered it down. It was a pinata that had been partially broken, but was still loaded with candy. We hurriedly loaded our pockets with candy.

This was where the Tony/Freddy involvement became troublesome. As we stayed at the house the next couple of days, it became obvious that Tony was dragging his feet over hooking us up with our next connection out of the city, and it was obvious why. After a few days, I told everybody I was just going to hitch from there, and Tony appeared to be happy to get rid of me, offering me a ride to the interstate. Things changed when Freddy decided he was hitching with me. Suddenly, Tony was willing to get in touch with his friend with the hippie bus.

It turned out there was a drum circle downtown the next day, which was a sure place to meet hippies going to Rainbow Gathering.

1:53pm: Random observations from the road:

There is a whole other vocabulary of slang here I never dreamed existed. Dank means good. Shwag means bad. Spange means asking for spare change. 6-up is the cops.

Every hippie has a drum. Most of them can play them alright.

Every other hippie has a wind instrument (flute, recorder, tin whistle). None of them can play it. All of them think that just hitting random notes is playing it.

Travelers take a certain amount of pride in how crusty their clothes get. Clean clothes are bad.

You run into the same people over and over again, which just goes to show how small the country really is.

Travelers always know each other when they see each other. It's just instinctual recognition of your own kind.

Wherever you are in the country, libraries are a safe haven.

In some towns, you can eat like a king from dumpsters. The amount of waste in the US is ridiculous.

1:36pm: Mutant Fest was an amazing festival. Imagine this: A couple of thousand people in the woods having one big party for a week straight. Acid, mushrooms, and weed were unbelievably easy to get hold of. You couldn't walk 20 feet without somebody inviting you to sit down and smoke a bowl with them. I wasn't sober for the entire week.

Describing the festival further is hard. There were lots of places where they had generators and blasted out music 24/7. There were all kinds of themed camps, like tea camp, and poison water camp (beer camp). Originally, me and Booger spray painted a skull and crossbones on my tarp and hung it like a flag, and designated our camp Irish Pirate Camp.

Later on, though, we decided to move in with meat camp, because they had (surprise) meat. Booger arranged us a ride to Salt Lake City with one of the people at meat camp, so we could go on to Rainbow Gathering from there.

The last day of Mutant Fest, I went out with a bang. Early in the day, I was given an eighth of mushrooms; that was my first hallucinogenic of the entire festival. Then, my drug-addled mind decided it wanted acid, so I broke out the $20 bill I was keeping as emergency money. The next thing I knew, with a little help from my friends, I'd bought five hits of acid. I took them all, while I was on the shrooms, and my mind was gone for the rest of the day (and night). I was seeing colors I didn't know existed.

The next day, Booger told me he'd decided to go to San Diego. I was losing my first road dawg. We did the man-hug and said goodbye, and Booger hooked me up with a new road dawg: a guy named Freddy (as in Freddy Kreuger). The first time I'd met Freddy, he stumbled into a camp I was hanging out at, yelled "I'm so fucking high!" and promptly fell over. He wasn't able to get up, despite repeated attempts, for the next hour.

So it was me and Freddy on the road from Eastern Oregon to Wyoming.

3:43pm: In Jackson, Wyoming on my way to Great Falls, Montana. No time for a real post now, so more later.

2:45am: I waited an hour for a ride after my friends got theirs. I danced, waved at cars, and did my best to look like I wouldn't kill people. Drivers are always worrying about getting killed by hitchhikers. I didn't really mind. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and I was in the forests of the Cascades.

Finally, a van stopped.

"Where you going?"

"Prineville! Mutant Fest!"

"Get in!"

A smooth ride is a rare thing when hitching, and this wasn't a smooth ride. They were coming up from San Francisco, with less idea of where Mutant Fest was than me. They were headed for Bend, which was a good bit south of Prineville, and didn't seem to hear me when I said I thought it was near Prineville. The driver and her boyfriend argued constantly, but the guy riding in back with me was cool, if a bit fried from doing too many drugs. He became obsessed with my hot pink lighter, which I eventually traded him for his Bic.

"Got any gas money?"

"I guess I could give you ten dollars."

So I was left with a few bucks to last me through the next week or so. I wondered how my friends were faring with their ride. Later, I found out the car they were in broke down, and they wound up having a harder time of it than me.

We pulled into Bend and walked around for a bit, looking for anybody that looked like they might know where Mutant Fest was. I'd stated several times that if we just found somewhere I could use the internet, I could get us directions, but to no avail. It was evening, and the library would have been closed, in any case. After an hour of wandering:

"I'm pretty sure it's up near Prineville," I said.

"Where's that?"

"North of here."

"I wish you'd said something earlier." I've developed my number one rule: Don't piss off the ride. So I didn't point out that I'd said something several times earlier.

We loaded up and headed north, with night fast approaching. The next town up was Redmond, and they decided they wanted to get some sleep. We wound up pulling up next to an empty field. There wasn't enough room in the van for all of us to sleep in there, so me and the other guy grabbed our bedrolls and went to sleep in the field. Within minutes of sacking out, a spotlight played over us. The cops.

They ran my ID, which wasn't a problem. I don't have any warrants (yet). They told us we couldn't sleep there, but directed us to a nearby Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is nice in the fact that they don't care if you sleep in their parking lot.

I sacked out in a field across the street, not caring that everybody driving by would see me laying there in my sleeping bag.

We woke in the morning, and the people driving put up signs saying they needed gas money, because frankly, we did. Two hours and $20 later, we were finally on the road to Prineville; I was so close to Mutant Fest I could taste it. As we went into Prineville, I told them to take me to the library, and I would get us directions the rest of the way. I promptly got on the library computer, tracked down directions, programmed the coordinates into my GPS, and let them know we were less than 40 miles away. I was their saviour; god knows if or when they would have gotten there without me.

As we pulled into Mutant Fest, located in the Ochoco National Forest, I said goodbye to them and set off to find Booger.

1:37pm: Eugene was a dead town. Hardly anybody was walking the streets when we got into town, early in the afternoon, and I took an immediate dislike to the city. Me and Booger walked around for a while looking for people he knew, and we ran into a few, street kids that hung around the town spanging and smoking pot.

The city wasn't all bad; there's a place that sells pitas that gives away the ones they mess up, and we scored a pita there. As evening approached, we came across two ladies that randomly gave us pizza and cookies. Sometimes, when you're wearing a pack and look like a traveler, people will be inspired to random acts of kindness.

We rounded up a couple of people Booger knew, a guy and his girlfriend, and decided to spend the night down by the river nearby. We made our way there and built a fire, and talked about nothing until late in the night. I hung my hammock from two trees and went to sleep watching the river under the skies.

Booger woke me up at some point. "Some tweaker was going through your pack. I got rid of him." That's the best part of traveling with other people: You have somebody to watch your back. Thankfully, nothing was missing.

The next day, we were ready to get out of Eugene and continue onward to Mutant Fest. Booger persuaded the girl to leave her boyfriend and come with us, so the three of us got on a local bus going the general direction we wanted that would drop us along the highway in the Cascade mountains. The plan was for the three of us to hitch from there. We still didn't know exactly where the festival was, but we knew it was near a small town called Prineville, and we were working on the hope that we could find a ride to the festival from there.

The Cascades were beautiful, and highway 126 is very scenic. We stood by the road, the three of us, holding a cardboard sign that said "Prineville." I made a second sign for myself, because it's difficult for three people to get a ride, and we knew we'd probably have to split up.

It wasn't long before a car stopped with room for two, so Booger and the girl got in and we made plans to meet up in Prineville. Of course, on the road, plans rarely work out that neatly.

More later.