wheezy e wrote:Sometimes not everyone can see the Pelican. I once did a brilliant spin into a field after swerving and ducking to avoid a bald eagle coming through the window. I think wind pressure off the windshield must have sent the suicidal fucker up and over my toyota pick up. It was early morning on a icy two lane rural highway, the bird was perched on a fence post next to the road and just took off straight into my path. To be honest, I'm still not positive the bird was actually there. I'd been awake for at least 36 hours without the aid of anything but coffee, driving for probably ten after having every bit of adrenaline drained from my body via being held at gunpoint for an hour outside of Seattle. My sleeping buddy/passenger once the truck stopped moving: "Wha, um, huh, um... We dead yet? No? You want me to drive then?" "Yes please."
So on with the show!
It was in the early to mid 90's, I'd say 93-95 which would make me 24ish. Whatever year California got record rains in Jan & Feb that destroyed parts of I-5 up & down the coast. My work was seasonal & gave me tons of time off in the winter. I had a friend, Jacob that was quitting his job to go fuck off in Central America for a couple years. We each had a little money and plenty of time so we decided to take a couple months and travel around the west a bit. I could stress "a little money" more, we intended to be as thrifty as possible since money would likely determine if I could stretch the trip all the way until Jacob's flight to Costa Rica. That's important to the story because it brought into the equation one of the most brutally evil books ever published- "Camp the US for $5 or Less - Western States." Sounded harmless enough, I figured it could be handy especially near urban areas. Yeah, well it turns out the book is a secret meet-up guide for perverts, mobile meth labs, escaped prisoners, & pretty much anyone else dipping their toe into the waters of creative sociopathology. We really intended to just camp/sleep for free as much as possible, but having some cheap sure-thing spots that we could sleep & shower couldn't hurt the cause, right? We're in my little toyota pick-up with a shell on the back, but we've got a lot of crap - 2 mountain bikes, 2 backpacks, some food, water, camp stove,etc... At the very least there'd be two bikes locked up to the truck, so we couldn't just park in a parking lot in town and not expect to get hassled. Good thing we took those bikes since it never stopped raining...
The whole trip was eerie, I know there's a lot I forget, but it started out with weird stuff like seeing a couple hippies loading a deer carcass into a vw bus. Then coming across this place in the middle of nowhere.
It was (shut down now) just like it sounds, big piles of bones which are just the finished product of big piles of dead animals + the desert sun. So literally there were just piles in various states of decay all over the place. There was a little barefoot blond girl about 4 running around with a bone keeping her hair in a bun & a one legged turkey that maybe came to and crawled out of it's intended spot in a pile or something. we found some dead sea lions later on, mudslides up and down the coast, I'm not sure if anyone was killed in those, but plenty of destruction. We helped a pair of adolescent runaway sweethearts dig a hole to try a covered pit set-up for cooking a turkey. Her parents forbade her to see him, so off they went into the woods. They knew where there were some Turkeys in a field & the boy was going to smash one's head with a rock, put it in his backpack and bring it back to their camp. They figured they could eat for a whole week on one cooked turkey. I have no idea how it turned out, but the hole was nice & I left them with my little folding army shovel. We slept on the side of the road in some national park one night while it stormed. Woke up the next morning literally trapped in between a mudslide and a rock slide a couple miles apart, no way out for hours.
We spent a week or so messing around most places & intended to do the same in Seattle, but keeping pace with the last couple weeks nothing went too well our first day there. We were both pretty burned out, everything was soaked, it had rained probably twelve days out of the last 2 weeks. Jacob had a friend of a friend who was going to let us crash for a night or two, do laundry & get everything dry but it didn't happen. I don't remember too much of what we did besides general walking around exploring alleys and drinking a lot of coffee. I do distinctly remember both of us feeling completely worn out and frustrated that day though. It was really late by the time we gave up on getting a hold of the couch/washer/drier person who we just talked to yesterday & knew we were coming. Despite the fact that our worst nights' sleep and biggest hassles so far have all centered around campgrounds found in the book, we stick with our system of picking the most promising el-cheapo official campground and heading toward it. Hopefully we find a better place to pull off & sleep before we get to said campground, but if not, so be it.
Something seemed wrong (to me, not to Jacob) about each place we stopped to check out, so eventually after me saying "too sketchy" to each place we ended up sitting in the truck looking at what we thought aught to be the campground from the book. But it was weird. There were what looked like semi-permanent additions built onto motor homes & campers, smoke coming out of chimneys and a very "lived in" appearance to the place. I'm guessing it's about 3 or 4 am. We drive through once looking for an empty spot. Some of the spots have numbers, some people are set up permanently in non-spots, I don't see any sign of a pay station or official info of any sort. This place is bad, everything about it is creeping me out. It's a makeshift neighborhood that's been here a while & I get the picture it isn't a 'cake and cookies for the new neighbors' type of crowd. Jacob, however, is a fucking obnoxiously optimistic people-type person. He can sweet-talk his way out of the worst trouble & he never sees (or remembers after the fact) anybody ever having an ulterior, selfish or malicious motive ever, the happy fucking hippie. "Oh don't be a baby Erik, this place is perfectly fine. I mean it's a campground for Pete's sake. it says so right here in this book. If anyone wants us out of here or has any problem with us we can just show them that we found the place with this book, they'll understand that we need some sleep & we'll be gone in the morning. You worry too much, man. Lighten up."
As I pull into the one empty spot & turn off the truck another car pulls in and makes its way towards us. It stops a few spots down in front of a travel trailer with a dilapidated 50's pick up truck growing weeds in the "yard." I think "this is very lucky." "I'll go ask this guy if it's cool or if we should split. I'll tell him about the book and ask if this is still a campground." I wait for him to get out of the car, but the car just sits there with tinted windows. Like 4 minutes maybe, nobody gets out. "Well, maybe he's waiting for us to get out. Maybe he's worried about us." "Guess I'll go find out, maybe you wait here so he doesn't think we're coming up to cause trouble." I get out of the car, wait, look around, start walking slowly towards the other car and kinda waving my hand to say "Pardon, can I ask you something..." Nothing, so I keep walking closer, I'm hoping my gestures are conveying that I'm completely harmless. I'm actually getting a little annoyed that the person won't ease my discomfort and let me at least ask what I want to ask. For fuck's sake can't you tell I'm at least trying to do my best to put you at ease, stranger? The window rolls down letting out a big smokey waft of whiskey soaked air & revealing a large revolver pointed at my face. "Whoa, whoa, I'm not here to... you definitely don't need tha.." He gets out of the car & is pretty fucked up, obviously. "Shut up" "Don't you fucking move and don't say anything." He walks right toward me & I start backing away. "Nah, Nah nah, it's ok man. c'mere. Really it's all alright, c'mere." he puts his arm around me, still pointing the gun at me & pulls me over to the side a bit, apparently out of another path of fire. He lets go of me and points across his gun arm - "You see that porch over there?" I see the porch and on it I see there's a guy in a chair with a rifle pointed at Jacob. Wow. "You tell your friend." "Um, hey Jacob." "Yeah?" (He had gotten out of the truck and started walking toward us slowly, but stopping and starting, not sure what to do.) "See that porch, you've got a gun on you." "Yeah, ok." I know Jacob started talking some too, trying to talk some sense into this guy. We both tried, he'd listen to a sentence or two then just get get angry that we're talking and not him. "Shut Up!" "Was you here the other night?" "Some kids come on up here last week and tried to steal muh classic truck, and we don't go for none of that kind of fucking bullshit." "Was that you? Because I'm thinkin it was probably you, motherfucker." "Jesus, no. We only just got to Washington a couple days ago." "No it was you... You need to come inside and we'll talk about this." "Look man, I'm so sorry to have upset your evening, we're just tired and looking for a place to camp." "WELL YOU AIN"T FUCKING CAMPING HERE MOTHERFUCKER. And you ain't leaving either. And I don't care if it wasn't you up here try to steal muh classic truck. We're still going inside to talk this over and maybe have a drink. Who the fuck told you to come on up here anyhow?" "We have this book, and it" "OOOOHH. YOU HAVE A BOOK. And the book says you can camp here. HEY BOB, THEY HAVE A FUCKING BOOK THAT SAYS THEY CAN CAMP HERE!" Bob spits out his beer and starts a laughing fit that turns into coughing as he gets up and comes to join the conversation. It lasted a while & there was plenty more said/slurred by all four people, but I can't remember it all. Nothing we said seemed to make any sense or register to either of these guys. It was pretty nerve wracking, we'd think we were making some headway "ok, he's calmed down, we're actually going to get out of this" Then he'd flip out again and start yelling, all the while the guns on both of us and telling us they were either going to kill us or we'd just have drinks and maybe play cards, but that would be determined after we all went inside for a drink to talk it through. No fucking way were we going inside, we kept diverting with conversation every time he started moving us toward the trailer. Eventually I said "Look, we're turning around and walking away. We're getting in the truck and never returning, please don't shoot us in the back." And we did just that while they insisted they were going to blow our heads apart if we took another step, etc... We got to the truck, got in and gently pulled away holding our breath. I stopped a mile down the road and got out of the truck. I don't remember if either I or Jacob puked, but it wouldn't have been very surprising.
After all the "Holy Shit"s and "I can't believe what just happened." We each tried to think of the closest place where we could maybe get something like a couple normal night's rests and some semblance of familiarity. We tried to think of who were the closest people we knew, besides the ones' places we'd already intruded upon. Reno was the closest. She was very pretty, a total sweetheart & would probably cook us some cheesy home fried potatoes if we told her about being held at gunpoint. The vision of a warm living room, an enticing smile, clothes in the drier, cheesy potatoes, maybe a movie on the tube was overwhelming. Christie's living room has to be like the antithesis of the last few weeks of this trip. The last few weeks have been increasingly ominous, the guns were only the exclamation point at the end. If we don't get THERE, to her living room, and fast, we may never actually get anywhere ever again. My memory (in the quote before the story) of driving straight through to Reno & thus being awake for at least 36 hrs. may have been incorrect. We had to stop and wait for a gas station to open in some podunct town so I may have grabbed a couple z's parked at the pump. Regardless, it was early morning & the rain had frozen to a solid sheet of ice. I was really on the edge of functionality between the lack of sleep, junk food, coffee, the gun experience... I really can't say for sure whether the eagle was there or not, but it's definitely what I remember and at the time I felt certain about what happened. However, I was also acutely aware that my senses were acting somewhat autonomously at this point. I was kinda hearing little things here and there, pure exhaustion. I'll guess I was doing 55 or so. Way to fast for the ice, but there was nobody on the road & the more I thought about the girl & Reno, the more important it was to get THERE. I didn't see the eagle until he spread his wings. I was kinda in a trance and thought "Oh, WOW." A second later he lunged, not away from the road as I was expecting, but toward it and immediately became huge in the windshield. I ducked & turned the wheel, spinning off into the field on the opposite side of the road. My thoughts were something like "Oh, of course. We're not making it to Reno and Christie is not going to get all swoony over your unshaven 4 days without a shower shiftless hobo ass despite your last two hours of daydreaming/driving about it. We're not getting to Reno or anywhere else. I've never felt so homesick and I'm going to die feeling this way." Luckily there was no fence on that side, not much of a ditch or none at all, I can't recall. I'm not sure exactly what my response to Jacob's "Are we dead yet?" query was, as I doubt I was certain of our actual state myself.
We made it to Reno & did get a couple days of needed rest, relaxation and cheesy potatoes. Hooray for Christie! Whew, that's it for tonight's story time! The moral? Don't be a cheapskate, shell out at least a tenner for a decent campsite.
