Vagabond is homeless again... in a much better way

originally posted by: The Vagabond
How to get where I am currently living:

Start at Captain Jack's Liquor Land and go south from there. Do not stop at Easy Street, just ignore the dead end signs and keep going. Take care not to make the wrong turn towards the correctional facility. When you run out of road make a left turn and go a little further. Go past the park authorities and the happy vacationing families until you find a little privacy, but not so much that anyone will question where you've disappeared to.
And that's how most of us got here.

I love this.

Is this your truck?

x

a reply to: Thurisaz

No I'm afraid not. I think I might start saving my beer cans towards one of those however.

Today my policy of being friendly with folks I wouldn't normally want to talk with for long paid off. Awkward, drunk, and somewhat down and out people tend to gravitate towards me. I wish it wasn't because I come across as a particularly functional specimen of their own kind but I think that's exactly it.

After an hour of conversing with an old national guardsman living out of his car here I avoided buying more ice and wasting half a can of chili by trading chili dogs for beer. After 3 hours I was ready to be alone again and having difficulty politely disengaging, but fortune smiled on me and a 20 minute thunder storm rolled thru just as things were close to getting awkward with the food beer and political / philosophical nodding exhausted.

Eta: last night I also had a cheap fun night out with my brother and his young friends. Unfortunately we ran home in the rain when our designated driver got drunker than anyone and I ended up sleeping on a floor then walking 8 miles back to camp in wet shoes because I was out of cigarettes but didn't want to wake anyone for a ride. But I'd do it all again. You can't be on the defensive just because you're uncomfortable and lacking the usual security of home. You have to say yes a lot and take what comes.

a reply to: The Vagabond

No house sitting needed on craigslist or woman looking for love sites bet some have a nice big home after the divorce

good luck and stay warm

a reply to: douglas5

Not my style. Not that the idea never occurred to me.
I tend to go for poor girls with even more issues than me, but I have noticed that every one I get involved with would give me absolutely anything that I would let them give. I also noticed when I was guarding country clubs and bouncing boy toys who had blown their meal ticket with six and seven figure cougars that I occasionally got a look and that i could hold down that game indefinitely without being tempted to make the classic mistakes that get those guys bounced. But then I have pride and a soul that needs actual love.

I can't stand to be taken care of anyway. Many was the day living with family that would begrudge me nothing that I still ate saltines for breakfast and lunch then made sure I was the last to eat whatever had been cooked for dinner, because I will mooch when I have to but it hurts my guts more than hunger.

And now in my camp site with my bug bites and my diet of hotdogs and granola bars and dried fruit and regular rain that I know will be snow sooner than I want to think about, I like my life better than I loved free air conditioned rooms with wifi and stocked kitchens. I have very little of what I thought I wanted, but I'm much happier. There's just something about being your own man. I can get another temp job, I can get another campsite, I can lose half the things I own save a few critical items that would probably also prove expendable if I absolutely had to go without. I can burn all of my bridges tomorrow and not worry about it.

Just today I was thinking about an old fear that loomed and then missed me back in 2008- what if I lost everyone who cares what happens to me and in alone with no home no savings and no real career. Well this is the answer. I'd be right here, in the same place where all the happy successful people chose to spend labor day. I guess there is still room in a America for dharma bums, though it's not quite what I envisioned when I was listening to Kerouac on audio book, it ain't half bad either.

And if a girl with rich parents wants to get us a room for a week and then have me drive her home to nor cal and buy me a couple lambics while we wait for my plane home... well that's what I did for the fourth of July and that's one thing because we both brought something to the table and enjoyed it and didn't make it a burden that outlasts the fun. But I want that occasionally and this most of the time.

Well I also read the whole thread and I gotta say, YOU DA MAN!

Hang in there my friend...Karma is a'smilin right on ya!

a reply to: baddmove

Thanks. I've been trying to write the story of my adventures here in camp. I have 8 disjointed pages - 2 2 and 4 on different subjects and angles plus a few gems I have to work in somewhere later. It would be more but I had to go help my brother with a car problem, which was actually great because I don't want to be a charity case and this is the first time he is lucky I'm here instead of the other way around.

I want to share a slightly foul mouthed gem that hasn't yet found it's place in my story

People in the mid west think Californians are p(_)ssies, which is understandable, but a Californian can be the bravest coward you'll ever meet. Every Americans' ancestors ran West to escape trouble, and ours ran the furthest. But the rest of America can keep running. Not a Californian. To our West is the biggest, coldest, deepest ocean on Earth, then communist China. This is America with its back to the wall- it's a cornered grizzly- and you don't fvck with it, cause it's scared and it's crazy and it will definitely shoot you.

Sonofabitch man, I just lost my car key for the second time on this on trip. Luckily I recovered it ASAP. The deal here is that my key has a plastic top which is broken and can easily fall off the ring. Stuff like this is not to be tolerated on a long journey. I have now procued super glue to fix the problem. I thought I was being smart by taking it off the ring and putting it in my wallet but in my haste to buy cigarettes I must have sent it flying. And yet again I had a suspect for a potential thief but that was not the case. It was a quick recovery with no harm done though. The take home message here is attitude. When it's do or die a man (or woman) can do anything. I've seen my old man do it a thousand times - repairing a broken fan belt with his tube socks, etc. When you're totally screwed, it's what would the Marines do . You retrace your steps you grid search you never just admit that you're fried. All this ended up being was an excuse to buy a shot of Jack I couldn't truly afford (I lost the key either at a bar or the gas station next door- the gas station it turned out. I was watching my parlay cards because my old man is in Laughlin and places bets on my behalf (chiefs and redskins burned me on a 100:1 shot, that's what I get for wearing a cowboy hat). Anyway that's today's news and lesson. What could have been a broken window plus a changed ignition when breaking the window didn't help ended up being a phone call and a small embarrassment.

a reply to: The Vagabond

You should get a spare key cut and attach it to the body some where vagabond save you a lot of hassle for a few bucks many years ago i went all sensible and decided to write 1 page every night ,i thought 365 days and i have a book , f-me i did it in 9 months .

It was a painters fun look at how dirty life was pure tongue in cheek pull the piss and boy did i , it was put together so the average joe would get the drift .

I got the number of of one of them small scale publishers who would do 1000 copies and had the 5k to do it but as soon as he saw the title [mein kampf 2 ] my struggle 2 ,guy vanished from the restaurant we were in when i turned my back for a minute .

Not long after things went real real bad , house got burgled and the only things taken were my laptop and the hand written manuscript long story short because i spilled coffee on my keyboard and gggggggggggggg uuu keys are sticking i slept in my van for a week in the middle of winter had to go off grid for my safety so i feel your pain stay safe man and keep

a reply to: douglas5

Having grown up in the same home as an escort service full of tweakers, I've never been a big fan of the hide-a-key. Show me someone who can't find that thing and I'll show you someone who never even thought about stealing a car. I've never lost a full ring so I'm confident that gluing the key so it won't come off the ring will be sufficient. I may make a copy to leave with my brother, assuming I can verify that the plastic part of the key doesn't contain a transponder.

Yet another quick tip about car bumming- treat your car with home defense bug spray. Last night a spider must have crawled up my pants leg.

a reply to: The Vagabond

I trust you set in on fire. and followed up with a rocket launcher.

a reply to: zazzafrazz

I haven't even bought the bugspray yet and the spider has lived to bite another day. Instead I will sleep in long underwear tonight.

a reply to: The Vagabond

Thank god you're not in Australia Sleep well.

There's not much in the way of updates really. The owner of a local sports bar almost got himself ratpacked by the Connors brothers over nothing at all but like I said the road is no place for tough guys and like my bro says if there was any question who woulda won we woulda had to fight, but I ain't going to jail just cause he's too scared of me to let nothing be nothing.

Other than that I'm still a peon- the health problem I thought I was over was only temporarily over at the time because vinegar only buys you a morning of legality it turns out. Now I'm free and clear for real but my work boots are in for repair (for the last two weeks - do your online homework before trusting local merchants) and anyway I've promised my low wage current job thru next weekend because they need guys like me to make a location change happen fast and I'll lose a little money to come thru because they have treated me with respect and not left me home on the days where there was no work to be done.

I figure I'll have the kind of job I want in a week or so now once my boots are back and my employer's move is accomplished. Not long after that it'll be freezing regularly and overtime might be out of the question but we will just see what happens.

I'm in dang good shape at this point if nothing else- probably as healthy as I've been since the Marines.

oh good on you. What a great adventure. Your flying by the seat of your pants!

such a great way to live. I am so jealous. My wagon died and now...cant go and travel about with my dog.

gave my convertible to my Son and all I would like in exchange is a motorbike and a sidecar so I can go trekking.

the side car is for my dog....so soon I will have a motorbike and I will wander about again and be free!!

a reply to: Thurisaz

Ah, motorcycle! There's the dream. I hope so very much that's how I'll be making my triumphant return to California in a year or two. You can get a lot lot further for your buck with one of those things if you know how to pack light (or have a PhD in bungee-cord-ology like my mother, who is a hardcore hog rider who feels owning any other vehicle in addition to her bike would be cheating).

Well, tomorrow is hopefully the end of peonage and the beginning of a lucrative construction career - or worst case scenario the beginning of a brief gainful employment that will enable me to leave better than I arrived and declare victory if I can't handle the winter.

I've built myself a little karma for the occasion. I don't think it's particularly classy to brag about charity but there's a lesson in this one I would rather celebrate than be quietly content with.

I was sitting in camp this afternoon laboriously copying football stats onto a chart I've made to help me do better on my weekly long shot parlay cards (for non gamblers, I pick the results of 5 football games and bet 2 dollars, and if I pick all 5 right I get 100 dollars- if I ever get good enough to pick 12 out of 12 that would pay 6,000 on my 2 dollar bet, but there are point handicaps so it's way harder than it sounds). Anyway between that and having found a radio station that plays pre-war rock n roll almost exclusively (there was exactly one rock n roll station in my home town for demographic reasons and it kind of sucks these days so good radio is huge to me) I was in my own little world.

Suddenly I hear a loud voice somewhere closer to my camp than usual, and look to find no one and go back to my own world. After a few minutes the voice is back, this time closer and when I look up there is somebody who is obviously in the same boat as me and having a tougher time of it standing at the window of my truck. So I roll it down to see what he wants, and he lays down his story. All explanations raise red flags to me, even though as a Californian who hates the East Coast I am well aware that I am full of unnecessary explanations myself and that it's part of what makes some people dislike me. The point of his story is he needs to borrow my spare tire. I was hesitant, but frankly ashamed not to help, so after some hmming and hawing and asking if my tire plug kit would help, it was agreed that we'd exchange phone numbers then he'd put 100+ dollars of my property on his car long enough to get to the Wal-Mart auto center.

Upon removing my spare I found the cable that suspends it under my truck was separated and several strands were already snapped. I was on my way to a traffic accident insurance would not cover if I hadn't taken that tire down!

Then while following him to Wal-Mart it dawned on me that I knew him - we worked together for a night as roadies at a Kat Perkins concert. I've always been proud of my loyalty to coworkers- I bring the military ethic to any job - our lives may not be on the line but our livelihoods are so the guy next to you is your brother. That would have hurt to realize if I had left him hanging so I could rock out and gamble and not worry about an old tire I wasn't even using.

So we got him there and then had a meal together at McDonald's- he and his girlfriend (also a coworker from the same event and one I'd taken a few glances at not knowing they were together) were good company and I had a better time not being alone than a third hour of music and statistics would have provided.

Now my tire is in the back of my truck where it will do no harm- instant payment of good karma- my admittedly reluctant decision to trust was affirmed, I can sleep without trying to rationalize that I wasn't there for a coworker as I've always been proud to be, and my favorite part of it: in some small way I got to play the hero. It's always been my style to ride in like the cavalry in a friend's darkest hour but in recent years I've tended to be the helpless one instead. I didn't grow up to be a cowboy or a war hero or a ninja turtle and that sucks - but I get my little moments, and I'm doing well enough that they're happening more and more again.

And good karma just keeps rolling in. At about 130 am I get a phone call while typing a thread post and am tempted to just let my friend think I'm asleep.

We had clashed over a woman over a decade ago and not spoken again until a couple months before I left home for here, when I got bored and noticed him on Facebook and decided it was time to make peace over nachos and beers.

A few days ago he sent me a mysterious "I need your help" which I answered. He remembered my junior high attempts at scifi writing, some of which we collaborated on, and wanted me to edit his rebuttal to an LA Times piece about some instagram chick who is currently being heralded as the "queen of raves" (which stuck a raw nerve for him as a DJ and veteran of the LA rave scene, which I know very little about but understand from friends is weathering an invasion by hipsters and the marketing forces that move them).

He felt I did a great job keeping his intent pure and clear while making it more readable. It was a welcome diversion from relistening to Terrence McKenna trialogues for the umpteenth time (I say with zero irony after taking a swipe at hipsters).

Anyway he was calling to let me know that be decided not to send it to the LA Times to be edited down and instead blogged it, getting 3k hits in a day before being picked up by an online rave mag with over a quarter million subscribers. Apparently there is some possibility of a column or at least some exposure and decent gigs for him in it. He's so optimistic he hopes to be able to pay me for future editing, although frankly I estimate the hope of that to be less valuable than the fact that my way with words is apparently going to cause a reasonably large number of people to listen to my friend. Not that money would be unwelcome, but I'm not counting it yet and I'll still be happy if it does not materialize.