[ Saturday, March 15, 2003 ]
Day 16 to Day 20
Tucson, AZ.
Met up with the guest worker/subcontractor team who write all the code and keep homelanddrifter.com up and running. We'll call them "Matt" and "Suzanne." Visited the warehouse off I-10 where they toil day and night as Cybraceros for the homeland, (Cybraceros is the successor to the old Braceros migrant worker program). Matt and Suzanne, during their few free hours one day a week, also write, teach, and "do stuff" as grad students in the English Department at U of A. Nice to re-connect with Suzanne, meet her kewl new guy Matt - and inspect the homelanddrifter.com web server and creative team with them prior to their spring break pilgrimage to the Sonoran Old Country (or is that Sicily?). Anyway, either way, thanks for the awesome organic Japanese dinner, the yoga, and the pod tour, folks!
"Blessed are the Peacemakers" by LZ (mixed media) in the Epic Cafe.
Thanks to the Epic for all the free radio signals and the good vibe, as opposed to . . .
. . . the suburban fuckin' horrorland of today. . . no, I'm not going to pay you 5 bucks to park my van in a state park so I can ride my bike, generators in the National Forest, shitheads on ATVs, Driving on I-10, I-19, I-8, hwy. 60, wave after wave of SUVs, angry, irritated. Pass me going 20 miles per hour over the speed limit in your Chevy Tahoe that's never seen dirt and never gone farther than the local grocery store, get a bigger American flag, you testosterone-poisoned yuppie dickhead, just put another fuckin' flag on that SUV, go out and buy more shit, and everything will be o.k., and when the war starts, you can rest well knowing that they're just Iraqi civilians, Iraqi children, so they don't really count anyway, and you'll never see the carnage on CNN, any anyway they're not really human because they're not American, because they're not white. Fuck suburbia. Wake the fuck up.
Soundtrack: Distance to Goa 5
Reading List: my stagnant, water-treading mind . . . NYT headlines while standing in line at the Circle K
Tombstone, AZ. Wander around the herds of anesthetized tourists grazing from one cheesy-ass tourist shop to the next. Until I see the poster. It's too bad the Indians didn't know how to wage war better, weren't better organized, didn't understand the magnitude of the threat to their homeland. I bet 90% of the tourists here couldn't name the tribe or tribes that this land belonged to before it was stolen by white culture and the white military. I couldn't, and I studied and practiced federal Indian law, for chrisakes. How the fuckin' west was won. Genocide light. Jesus Christ. Give me a fucking break.
Oracle, AZ. Biosphere 2 Center. Great tour here yesterday. Biosphereans. Two missions - now managed by Columbia University as a research laboratory, and no longer operated as a "closed-system." Mysteries abound. Where did all the ants come from? Who was stealing the bananas? Could we really live on Mars? Why hasn't the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol? I noted and documented (above) the REAL reason both missions "failed" - only one mescal plant for 8 people. Sorry, Sylviatrix, if you see this, but I included a good link for the sake of accurate information.
Further Investigations. Is there really a Bagdad Cafe? If so, who cares? In search of Motion. What is grace? Where is the sublime? More and more and more and more and more . . . Coming up with coordinates for the TAZ, this one and others . . . in the National Forests, not to be confused with a/the Rainbow Gathering . . gathering GPS data for another Burning Man spin-off TAZ. Bad F*cker Highway Department, over and out. [3/15/2003]
[ Monday, March 10, 2003 ]
Day 13 to Day 15
Beyond Everest base camp. Finally dropped below the snow line, and into the hard-boiled wonderland of the desert SW. No more power squares and Knob Creek, now it's all about cheap cheddar cheese, wheat crackers, and celery & peanut butter, nature's candy, baby, and no cigarettes since leaving the Buddha's Belly in LA. More yoga, perhaps, tonight, and, jesus, feeling almost physically fit.
Homeland, CA. Drove through Thursday evening, population three thousand, not even a good sign to photograph, no one to interview. Felt it absolutely necessary to get off the freeway and detour to there, though. Rolled into the San Bernadino NF late that night and camped, the only person in the whole place. Applied some limo tint security modifications to the van the next a.m. and then carried on eastward.
Spotted and snapped a few photos (above) of Area 51, or Area 47, or some "Area" visible from state hwy. 85, southbound, at the 22.5 mile marker, pulled over for less than the time it took to slap in a new CD and check the batteries on the digital camera, and didn't even see the humvee coming. They had the turret-mounted .50 cal. swung around and levelled at me before I signalled back into traffic and got off the emergency parking lane. I threw a handful of homeland security stickers out the window behind me . . . escaped before the black helicoptors and killer bees responded to the scene.
Soundtrack: Public Enemy, By the time I get to Arizona.
Reading List: The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest
Tucson. Arrived Friday night and camped off the Catalina Highway. Rode a trail at Molina Basin the next morning, which was a humbling experience, to say the least. I wasn't ready for the elevation change or the steep technical ascent, played hike-a-bike for half the climb, but recovered enough confidence to bomb most of the backside single track. I love my bike, and am almost feeling dialed into it now.
Camped another night in the Coronado NF, and rode Sunday on the 50 Year Trail on the other side of Mt. Lemmon. Spent an hour at the trailhead getting local knowledge from other bikers. Nice. Tucson riding fucking rocks. (Coronado NF and 50 Year photos below).
Soundtrack: Pet Shop Boys, West End Girls (West End Boys?)
We've got no future, got no past,[3/10/2003]
here to stay, built to last,
in every city, and every nation,
from Lake Geneva to the Finland Station
PAY ATTENTION BLACK ROCK CITY
