29/10/2003

I'm finally back. It's good to be home.

27/10/2003

What was supposed to be a weekend trip starting Friday the 10th has turned into nearly three weeks and, three thousand miles later, I'm still not home. At this point, I'm just hoping to get back and change servers before my current web host goes away. Procrastination sucks. If my site shuts down for a day or two, don't worry about it. I'll get it up and running again as soon as I get home. It's been a good trip though, other than the fact that I only packed enough clothes for three days. We went to Southern Oregon, then up to Montana, over to Portland then back down to Southern Oregon, where we are now.

08/10/2003

I'm out of orbit today, stalled on everything. Here are my notes from Sunday. Morning, with all its possibilities, looms before me, then rushes past. Mid-morning. Ideas bob along the horizon like marker buoys in choppy waters. Noon. I'm completely lost, surrounded by a flat, endless horizon towards which I row my boat in widening circles. This has not been a very productive week. I haven't decided on a server and, more than that, I dread making the switch. Up until now, a friend has hosted the Ashabot for free. He set up it up. I have no idea what I'm getting into now. Probably it's no big deal, but thinking about it is making me nuts. Also, I haven't finished reformatting an issue of my zine that needs to get done yesterday. Bad. Very bad. On the up side, I did find a place to present my one act play, Ghostwriter. It's the Comma Cafe in Carson City. The place has a great little stage, a very comfortable atmosphere and comes at a price I can afford, free. When I asked the proprietor what the space costs she said, "Nothing. It's people helping people". She makes it on the refreshments. So, here's a little fun a friend sent me. Try it out. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction. See if you can do both actions without a change of direction. If you can't, you know how I'm feeling tonight.

02/10/2003

I'm going to be switching servers for the Ashabot next week. I hope it will be seamless but if the site is down for a while, it shouldn't be long. I'm not looking forward to doing this but, as the saying goes, "circumstances beyond my control"....

26/09/2003

We're back

. . . but I can't say I'm particularly happy about stuffing myself into an indoor routine. In spite of some hard miles in the Nevada outback over (a few particularly bad) dirt roads (part of the fun after all), it was a great trip. We saw mountain lion cubs, wild horses and burros, a big, fat, lazy rattlesnake, and we found half-billion year old trilobites in the Wheeler Shale of Western Utah. After we spent a couple of hours at a U-Dig place, for $6 an hour, we struck out on our own and found more for free. For the most part, the shale is on public land. What amazes me the most is that when the trilobites swamed the earth, the Utah of today was located near the equator and covered by a shallow, warm sea! Oddly, a perfect end for all this was poking around Las Vegas for a few days on the cheap.

As soon as we got into Vegas we went to the public library and got on line. While I was fiddling around with my blog and email, Lee went to Cheapo Vegas and found an internet coupon for the Plaza Hotel for $20 a night (great room), plus 2 coupons for their breakfast buffet at the Chop Chop Chinese Restaurant (pretty grim). There was also 2 free nights in December thrown in, which we're planning to take them up on it. As neither of us gambles or drinks, it was an especially great deal.

Vegas Cowgirl

Of course we all know Las Vegas is really just a bowl of smoke with a very dark underbelly, but it is also a very seductive bowl of smoke especially on the strip. Some of the hotels there are completely over the top. Usually we gravitate to the downtown aka Fremont District or "Glitter Gulch". A while ago it was renovated to compete with the strip but Glitter Gulch of old (that's our hotel at the end of the Gutch) is the Vegas you see in the old movies with the rearing palomino horse and the cowgirl living it up under the stars. It's casual (seedy) so basically more our style.

This trip we made a point of checking out the big hotels on the strip. In fact, we spent so much time sitting in the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel people watching, that the security guards started watching us. We moved on. When we passed through the lobby a bit later, they were discretely tossing out some guy who had passed out on the couch where we'd been sitting. His head had dropped way back and his mouth was gaping open.

If you want to read more about adventures in the Nevada Outback, a place few visit and even fewer write about, email me. I may be able to come up a copy of Dirt Roads to Nowhere.

21/09/2003

Outback

I never thought the first mountain lions I'd ever see would be 50 miles out of Las Vegas, but there they were…three fat, tawny spotted, beautiful lion cubs in the most dry and forlorn mountains I've ever visited. It was in the afternoon, two days ago. We were scouting for a camp when Lee noticed something larger than a jack rabbit move in the underbrush growing on the slop below a bluff. Mama must have been out hunting because they were on their own, three children torn between curiosity and caution. We stopped the jeep, pulled out our binoculars and watched them watch us. They looked awhile then, yielding to caution, climbed a little further up the hill, weaving in and our of various caves at the base of the butte. At points they'd sit again and stare at us. Finally they settled down behind some sagebrush and stayed there. We camped not too far down the road but never saw them again. We’re in Las Vegas now, at the public library. This is a much stranger place if you ask me, but kind of fun if you're a human.